You just can’t win with a conspiracy theorist. For him or her, the long-established association of conspiracy theory with paranoia goes to show that there is a secret plot to conceal the truth and discredit truth-tellers. However, as Joseph Heller put it, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ And, in any case, perhaps the sanest response to the prevailing conditions is paranoia. Look at the news. There’s the bankers, of course, conniving to rip us off. But even doctors are at it too. GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined $3 billion for convincing them to prescribe inappropriate medicine.
Yes, these are indeed high days for conspiracy theories. The internet has vastly increased information availability and awareness of the forces which govern our lives. Meanwhile, we remain storytelling mammals, programmed to make sense of what’s out there: and there is nothing so efficient as a good conspiracy theory to provide a comforting explanation of a crazy world. Mention one conspiracy theory and you will soon become acquainted with numerous others, all somehow linked: the dark dealings and money manipulation of the central banks, the unnecessary wars, the emphasis on ‘panem et circenses’ (or sport and shopping), the fluoride in water, the trails of spirit-dampening chemicals emerging from aeroplanes — it is all, apparently, geared to suppress and exploit common people and further the interests of a tiny elite.
It’s easy to get carried away. We shouldn’t forget, though, that conspiracy in some contexts is the norm. One can sanely believe that the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag in 1933.
Then again, a government might respond with such alacrity to an event that the event is assumed to have been staged in order to justify the response.
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