My Appearance on "One on One With Steve Adubato."

The August 20th episode of the "On on One With Steve Adubato" show is available online right here. 

We discuss the dark side of the conspiracy culture and why all the Alex Joneses and "crisis actor" conspiracy fanatics have crossed way over he line of all human decency today. As I make the point in my novel, CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, people like that can hardly be cast as heroes any more.

And the antidote to all this madness where people who want to believe too much and want to live inside their self-constructed fantasy worlds of chem-trails and shadow governments, run by the New World Order, the Illuminati, and time-traveling Nazis commanded by Elvis Presley? Education! As I discuss the fantastic opportunity I get to teach about the conspiracy culture and its destructiveness, education must now become the bulwark against the modern Dark Ages we are slipping into faster and faster.

And you can be sure that absolutely no student will ever walk out of any of my classes believing in crisis actors or how the Freemasons coordinated the attacks of 9/11 from Denver International Airport.

My interview on the Projection Booth podcast

I recently got the chance to talk about the classic 1974 conspiracy thriller "The Parallax View" on The Projection Booth podcast. You can check it out here. The entire show is a fantastic series of discussions about the film - and it includes an interview with William Daniels, one of the stars of the film - but my segment starts at 1:46:00.

The film really is one of the best examples of the political conspiracy theory genre, very tense and unnerving because it is plausible. The film is a product of a time, after all, when conspiracy theories themselves were plausible, well before they spun off into the realm of the false flag, crisis actor, flat Earth and chemtrail absurdity that's putting piles of money into the coffers of all the Alex Joneses out there.

We discuss the impact of the film on the genre and the evolution of "real" conspiracy theories themselves, the way these theories always need to grow, to top themselves, to make claims that are more outrageous and outlandish than before.

I also got to talk about my new novel, CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, and how conspiracy theorists should seldom be seen as heroes these days. Conspiracy theories have mutated from critical warnings about how power can be abused, turning instead into a demented, social-constructionist fantasy world where anyone can claim belief in anything and the lack of any evidence to back up their beliefs can always be blamed on the machinations of a big, evil, shadowy conspiracy.

August 20: My appearance on "One on One with Steve Adubato"

The date is set! On August 20 my interview on the "One on One with Steve Adubato" show will air. Check out the program schedule right here.

We will be discussing my new novel, CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, along with the corrosive and downright sleazy impact of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones on American society. Very timely, I think, especially with all the bizarre new headlines about the QAnon conspiracy theory and Jones getting the book off of social media sites like Facebook, Apple, and Spotify.

Actually, this is not a good idea.

So tech giants Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, as discussed in this article, have just banned Alex Jones' InfoWars website from their services. These services, of course, have every right to do so as private companies and this in no way constitutes any form of censorship. Only the government can censor. Private organizations and individuals have absolutely no legal obligation to give anyone a platform for their speech.

However, this is still not a good idea.

The only thing such a move can accomplish is to make a martyr out Jones. Removing his moronic conspiracy rants from these sites will now make him even more appealing as a "rebel" who dares to "speak out" and "expose the truth" that the big, evil, New World Order mainstream media tries to keep hidden. He, in fact, is already telling his readers and listeners that InfoWars is the most "censored" site on the Internet. It makes it sound really sexy and courageous, doesn't it? I bet his dimwit fans certainly think so. This move just might have been one of the biggest favors Facebook and these companies could have done for Jones.

Banning speech by organizations in the business of mass communication, even when legally allowed, is seldom a desirable - or even ethical - thing to do. Even if this speech is the sort of absurd and repugnant conspiracy theorizing that's Jones' stock in trade, offensive speech is best countered by more speech. The very philosophical foundation of democracy, after all, is the idea that individuals must be trusted. As vast a marketplace or ideas should be provided for individuals as possible because is such a marketplace, sensible, logical and decent expression by decent people will outweigh the garbage.

The best antidote to Alex Jones' garbage is not to martyr him but to expose it for what it is.

How to Deal With a Professional Scumbag

If anyone was still doubting that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is one of the most vile human beings around today, his rantings about "false flag" attacks and "crisis actors" being behind mass killings like the Colorado theater shooting, the Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and Parkland shootings, and the Boston Marathon bombing should erase all doubts in any sensible mind. And they should erase all doubts in any one with any tiny sliver of human decency.

Now notice that I didn't write anything along the lines about his rantings being "demented" or "delusional" or "insane." Alex Jones is among the lowest dregs of humanity exactly because he is completely sane and knows what he is doing. His bovine manure about these crisis actor conspiracy theories, accusing grieving families of lying about the loss of their loved ones, are carefully calculated to rile up a very specific sector of society - the disaffected, the ignorant, those with significantly diminished intellectual capacities, the fantasy prone, the losers of life who need to look for scapegoats to blame their lot in life on. People like this are Jones' bread and butter and he knows exactly what he needs to do to keep them listening to, watching, and reading his bilge. These people need to have their siege-mentality paranoia fed and Jones tells them exactly what they want to hear. They want to hear about the Illuminati and the New World Order and the Bilderbergers and the International Bankers coming after them to enslave them and throw them into FEMA camps in Area 51 and under Denver International Airport. Jones provides these losers with the exact product they are looking to consume.

Except these losers have been subjecting the grieving families and survivors of these mass killings to vicious harassment and threats. And Jones knows this. He has known this for years and kept stoking the rage of these conspiracist morons with no regard to the viciousness they are capable of.

Except now the victims are fighting back. Jones has been hit with defamation suits by the people he has been tormenting. As this excellent op-ed piece explains, ignoring conspiracy theorists no longer works because it mere emboldens them. Since Jones and his sleazy ilk love words like "war" and "fight" and battle, it's time they were given the war they have been asking for.

This article will definitely be a tool I will be using in my own classes on conspiracy theories to do my own small part through academia to combat this sort of reprehensible conspiracy sewage spill that has been polluting American culture.

What If Agent Scully is Really the Good Guy?

So I just finished binge-watching season 11 of The X-Files and reflected on my changing feelings about this show and its characters. To be sure, I was a devoted fan during its original run, watched the two theatrical films - own both of them on DVD - and I was looking forward to its season 10 revival in 2016. I was curious, though, if the revival could be pulled off effectively given how every sensible person today should be leery of anyone calling himself a conspiracy theorist. Can conspiracy-believing Agent Mulder still be seen as admirable in an age where conspiracists are propagating offensive nonsense like "crisis actor"" theories and their most visible public representative is a bloviating charlatan like Alex Jones?

It was interesting to see that at the start of the season 10, the show was kind of aware of this. The Internet conspiracy theorist character (Joel McHale) appeared to be the sort of unhinged nut a writer would create if they tried to pay homage to Alex Jones. One couldn't help but completely side with Scully in the scenes where the McHale character unspooled his claims of far-reaching, all-powerful cabals and their diabolical plots. The show could have taken a fascinating opportunity to examine the dark side of the conspiracy culture and conspiracy entertainment itself. It could have made a more pointed commentary about when we cross the line between healthy skepticism of authority and a delusional world of post-fact fantasies so much of American culture is sinking into.

As of this writing, there is still no word from Fox about whether the show will be renewed for a 12th season. The ratings for Season 11, after all, have been declining. Could the reason for this be that viewers, too, are coming to realize that conspiracy theorists are no longer the good guys?

Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Conspiracy Theorists

I am quoted in this article about a new study into the psychology of conspiracy beliefs. It's fascinating to read that insecurities kindled in people from the time they are infants will shape their predisposition to believe in fantastic, irrational, and unrealistic claims of massive conspiracy theories later in life. These findings are not surprising, though, as a growing body of research has been affirming that people who tend to be the biggest fans of the most outlandish conspiracy theories are also those who feel the most powerless, alienated, and insecure. "Individuals with anxious attachment are preoccupied with their security, tend to hold a negative view of outgroups, are more sensitive to threats, and tend to exaggerate the seriousness of such threats," the study says.

Raising well-adjusted children who are given adequate feelings of security and control in their lives might be a good start to help keep us from raising another generation of kids who will believe that the Earth if flat, that LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, the Dallas police, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, aliens, oil billionaires, Elvis Presley, Oliver North using a time machine, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne shooting from the grassy knoll killed JFK.

Moreover, as I argue in the article, the educational system needs to do its part in teaching logic, critical thinking skills, and media literacy skills to help young people deconstruct the messages of paranoia hucksters like Alex Jones and the flat Earthers, to understand all of the underhanded and unethical communication tactics conspiracy theorists use to convince the gullible and unwary of everything from "crisis actor" conspiracy theories to the fantasies of the anti-vaccination crowd.

I incorporate such exercises in the class I teach about conspiracy films and American culture at Saint Peter's University. In their semester projects, students need to manufacture their own conspiracy, creating one using tactics such as the reverse scientific process to cherry-pick facts that support preconceived notions, inaccurately assigning causality between unrelated variables, and launching all manner of character assassinations against one's critics. Once students can see how easy it is to create vast conspiracies where none exist, they should hopefully be able to recognize all the flat Earth theories, Moon landing hoax theories, and 9/11 Truther claims for the simple parlor tricks they are.

Anyone Still Think Conspiracy Theorists Are Heroes?

So this was certain to happen within hours, if not minutes of a tragedy like the Parkland, Florida mass shooting. The conspiracy theorists peddling their "false flag" scenarios are flooding the internet with claims about the shooting being a hoax and the victims and survivors being crisis actors. Some kind of a sinister "They" are behind the shooting to enact gun-control laws and take away our freedoms and advance the agenda of the Illuminati and the "globalists" and the "international bankers" and so on and so forth.

I'm fascinated by just who exactly "they" are supposed to be right at this moment. In the aftermath of the Colorado theater shooting and the Sandy Hook massacre, "they" were the liberal minions of Barack Obama, with Obama supposedly masterminding and pulling the strings behind the killings to advance his gun control agenda. But how about now? With Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans holding the legislative power at the moment, can this conservative power in Washington also be a part of this shadowy, malevolent "them?"

Oh, wait a minute, "they" control everyone, right? Conservative, liberal, libertarian, everyone. They pull the strings from the Bohemian Grove and Denver International Airport and Area 51 and the meetings of the Bilderberg Group. OK, got that. Sure! Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones have exposed all of that. Gotcha!

Actually, making sense of these sorts of demented fantasies is similar to sitting down and trying to discuss logic with the inmates of a lunatic asylum. But at least the ever more critical coverage of the conspiracy subculture by the media is becoming somewhat heartening, like in this piece on CNN. No longer do these people seem to be ignored as goofy, colorful, and ultimately harmless group of cranks who exist on the fringes and harm no one. Their maliciousness and utterly shameless sleaze is finally being called out for what it is.