The conspiracy theory mindset - rethreaded

I see. So you didn't want to actually ask anything serious about conspiracy theory

You wanted to debunk scepticism

I'm out. Your decorum is atrocious.

I do have serious questions. The question-in-chief is, "Why are conspiracy theorists so credulous? Why are they so resistant to logic?"

Looking for order in a chaotic world - rationalising horrible events that seemingly occur at random by constructing a singular, all powerful villain on which to lay the blame. It's basically a far simpler and, in some ways, comforting way of viewing the world.

Looking for order in a chaotic world - rationalising horrible events that seemingly occur at random by constructing a singular, all powerful villain on which to lay the blame. It's basically a far simpler and, in some ways, comforting way of viewing the world.

So you didn't bother to research, instead you just decide to repeat it?

I'm sorry but that's idiotic. I've researched 7/7 extensively, I've never read anything about this bizarre claim that soldiers were "stationed" at the blast sites (you do realise the blasts occurred on the tube? That means an underground train), it makes no sense.

And what about the fact that the bombers were associated with Al-Qaeda, they recorded martyrdom videos which were released by Al-Qaeda after 9/11?

Has it occurred to you that if someone makes an outlandish claim, you should probably research it before repeating it, rather than credulously taking it at face value? Any sensible Londoner would intuitively know how stupid it is to claim the army was "stationed" on a particular underground train

Hey folks,

There was a technical issue and the previous thread disappeared (not binned in moderation, the mods are not sure what happened to it). Here it is again

I'm interested to know what drives the conspiracy theory mindset, and why people are inclined to believe such nonsense? Are they credulous, even stupid? Or are there deeper psychological or cultural factors at play?

A few examples. One is the ridiculous claims about the Rothschild family. There is no doubt the Rothschild family, along with the Barings and Coutts families, exercised disproportionate power and influence in the 19th century. Before there were well-managed, state-owned/controlled central banks, these families acted as a kind of private International Monetary Fund, who often bailed out governments.

But by the mid-20th century, their power was had waned. The Bank of England was nationalised by the Labour Party in 1945 and assumed a much more active role in financial markets. The Austrian Rothschilds had their wealth stolen by their Nazis and didn't manage to get much back after the war. And the French Rothschilds' firm nationalised by the French state in the early 1980s. There's no doubt that they're a wealthy family, worth a few billion pounds. But beyond that, it's all just idle and baseless speculation unsupported by facts.

The 7/7 attack is another example. Conspiracy theorists tend to claim that these young men were actually working for the Security Services and thought they were taking part in a terrorism drill. This is fatuous, to say the least. Shehzad Tanweer and Mohamed Siddique Khan recorded videos explaining why they were going to be suicide bombers, and this video was released by Al-Qaeda shortly after the 7/7 bombings. This conspiracy would also require the existence of a cell within the Security Services who were undertaking these false flag operations, and who were completely unknown to anyone else working in the intelligence community.

Finally, there were bizarre claims that the Bali Bombings in 2002 (which many Brits tend to forget about, but 27 British citizens died in the attack, along with 88 Australians killed and a total of 202 killed overall) must have been an Israeli tactical nuke because the blast was so powerful, and that a potassium chlorate bomb (which was the blast material) was incapable of causing the kind of damage seen. With some very cursory research, I found out that the way the bomb was put together (2200lbs of chlorate in 12 plastic cabinets, with aluminum powder, TNT boosters linked with PETN detcord and RDX-electric detonators) actually caused a thermobaric effect, and the amount of explosive (equivalent to two Mk 84 bombs) was more than sufficient to cause the blast damage and burns caused.

Why do people believe this stuff? I've never met a well-educated, successful person who subscribes to this stuff; it always seems to be embittered, less educated people, often bigoted or highly religious. It's also strange to me that many Islamists manage to hold the two contradictory thoughts that they both support bombings/attacks on the West, but believe that when they do happen it must have been a CIA/MI6/Mossad conspiracy.

Most conspiracy theories fall apart with even cursory research, and the theorists appear to take any challenge to their account of events to be proof that you too are part of the conspiracy / a "government shill". Where there are inconsistencies or seeming mistakes in the government account of events, they don't take that to mean the government made a mistake, or was perhaps incompetent or even might be holding back information for self-serving reasons, they take it to mean the government must have been directly involved.

Conspiracy theories, and the general attitude of conspiracism, of overly-cynical attitudes to public service and our democratic system (including left-wing/Islamist conspiracism that asserts Western governments actions are driven by a desire to attack Islam or oppress the inhabitants of the Mid-East), is corrosive to the body politic, and these theories should be challenged.

Awful lot pointing to Israel's Mossad being behind 9/11 for to be considered a conspiracy?

Just dug this up but look at.


All this mess in the Middle East is being created by our governments.

X

Awful lot pointing to Israel's Mossad being behind 9/11 for to be considered a conspiracy?

Have you realised what the definition of a "conspiracy" even is?

It is anything that disagrees with the mainstream media.

Therefore people use the term "Conspiracy" as a derogatory concept

Do you realise we live in a world where the President of the United States, President Obama is a Nobel Peace prize winner who authorised Federal forces to be able to kill any citizen in the continental United States with a drone strike which is even in violation of the constitution.

Do you realise that the new terrorists are people who disagree with the new Statist collectivist way of thinking and being dependent on the State?

Do you realise that you have been bombarded with so much false information that you are no longer even capable of critical thinking?

and yet Israel was started by a kind of mythical claim (from potentially mythical books and without geographic references) from 2,000 years ago and this claim is considered legitimate.

I won't go into any of the things directly against your God, the mass-media (what you consider to be "Conspiracy") as I don't want to trigger a Pavlovian Classical Conditioning type reaction I.e. Make people salivate as opposed to think.

There are certainly a lot of mentally ill people claiming that, but no; there is not a jot of actual evidence that supports the contention that 9/11 was carried out by Mossad.

If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction; Israel warned the US government several times in the summer of 2001 that there was a big Al-Qaeda attack in the works.

Must have been awkward when all those Mossad agents ran to the cockpit and round a load of all qaeda guys there already. "come on guys we told you we we're doing this Tuesday, you had Thursday"

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Therefore people use the term "Conspiracy" as a derogatory concept is synonymous with the phrase "The mainstream media is my Lord and God."

Just use your common sense, if the Rothschilds and other Zionists had no power, how did they influence the West in creating the State of Israel for them? Why does the West continue to get invlolved in Middle Eastern wars for them and instead of fixing the issues, they intently try to make the situation more chaotic?

A global elite controlling us, that wants to destabalise the Middle East shouldn't even be discussion worthy, its happening right before our eyes. But I guess thats the power of propoganda and brainwashing.

There are certainly a lot of mentally ill people claiming that, but no; there is not a jot of actual evidence that supports the contention that 9/11 was carried out by Mossad.

If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction; Israel warned the US government several times in the summer of 2001 that there was a big Al-Qaeda attack in the works.