Conspiracy Theories and Thought-Stopping Cliches

In March I was the keynote speaker at the Central New Jersey MENSA chapter’s annual convention, discussing misinformation and conspiracy theories, the reasons so many are obsessed with them more than ever today, the pernicious social impact of these belief systems and how to try and combat them. But we also discussed an aspect of conspiracism that is just as dangerous to society; the turning of the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a thought-stopping cliché deployed to shut down conversation, debate, and any and all questions aimed at institutions of power. In the months since the MENSA gathering, this problem only seems to be getting worse. Calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” is now the surest way to try and silence anyone who disagrees with you. 

 

As I had written before in my discussions of my work on the conspiracist phenomenon, its reflections in art and popular culture as well as my run-ins with members of this community—and as you can read in my dialogue with many of these people in this blog, especially the recent posts about the special edition magazines on vampires and Dungeons and Dragons—I think these belief systems have metastasized into something destabilizing and malignant in societies where they take root. And these theories have spread in numerous foreign countries as well, not just in the United States. Check out links here, here and here, for articles about conspiracy beliefs in Europe. Far from merely questioning authorities and being suspicious of bureaucracies and officialdom, the modern conspiracy movement has turned into a phantasmagorical alternate universe where no consensus reality exists, where people create their own reality at will. 

 

Conspiracism has created delusional subcultures of people who believe the Earth is flat, that reptilian aliens are running the world, the Moon landing is a hoax, and that the New World Order cabal used nuclear warheads and death rays from space to destroy the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. These are, of course, a very, very few examples of what goes on in conspiracy world. If you are an avid reader of conspiracy sites like "Before It’s News" and "State of the Nation" and any number of their ilk across cyberspace, you can be deluged by a daily tsunami of conspiracy theories about false flag attacks, predictive programming, crisis actors, the “true” origins of Covid, and rococo yarns spun about “Khazarian” plots to enslave the world that sound so illogical that even the most whimsical science fiction fan couldn’t suspend enough disbelief to accept them on the pages of low-rent pulp novels.

 

Conspiracism leads to a dangerous, unstable world of total relativism, a world where there is no consensus reality, a rejection of all proven expertise, and a place that rejects empirical, evidence-based logic. Although conspiracy world claims to be looking for the “truth” that is “out there,” truth actually does not exist in that world. Truth and reality are whatever you decide they are because they make you feel good. If someone attempts to interrogate your truth, to attempt to counter it with empirical facts, you dismiss that person by accusing them of being a part of the conspiracy. In conspiracy world, people will not only make up their own creative fantasies about human sacrifices and vampiric blood-drinking rites being carried out in tunnels under pizza parlors, but they might pick up a gun and storm pizza parlors on a rescue operation. In conspiracy world, people’s lives were put at risk after a fraudulent claim that the measles vaccine caused autism. Starting in 2020, thousands of people with compromised immune systems, in essence, committed suicide by refusing to take the Covid vaccines after choosing to believe their own personal truth about those vaccines carrying microchips made with alien technology in order to alter human DNA.

 

And conspiracy theories are dangerous because they make many more people automatically suspicious of charges of official misconduct, corruption, and coverup. If people read enough claims of Covid 19 having been caused by G5 cell towers as a part of a mind-control operation by the Illuminati, they tend to dismiss the very real forms of governmental overreach during the pandemic, dishonesty about the efficacy of the vaccines and the lockdown efforts to contain the virus, and the heavy-handed attempts to censor and limit questions and public discussion about the possible origins of the outbreak itself. This is how the term “conspiracy theorist” turns into a thought-stopping cliché, a cudgel to beat down any skeptic of official narratives and policy.

 

The most egregious example of the weaponization of the term “conspiracy theory,” its use as a tool of censorship was in the case of Covid origins. The early hypothesis about the origins of Covid favored by the scientific establishment was that it originated in Wuhan in a wet market where animals like pangolins and racoon dogs were sold for food. Almost from the very beginning, however, any alternative hypotheses like the possibility that the virus could have escaped from a local laboratory where gain of function research—research on how to modify viruses to make them more deadly—was underway was derided as dangerous, “baseless” conspiracy theories. How the idea that a disease outbreak starting in the city where a laboratory was working on increasing the lethality of viruses could be regarded as “baseless” defies all sense and logic. The Chinese government not only denied these claims vociferously, but it hampered the world scientific community’s efforts to find the outbreak’s origins. But such would be expected from a genocidal dictatorship. One would not expect it, however, from many in the scientific establishment who immediately declared that any and all discussion of the lab leak theory should be suppressed immediately. Science, after all, is a method for seeing knowledge, seeking empirical, quantifiable facts. This process involves constantly questioning research findings themselves, double-checking, and constantly replicating previous claims to the truth to make sure that no mistakes had been made. However, in the Covid era's anti-conspiracy hysteria, not only was the idea that a lethal virus could escape from a research facility that was tasked with creating lethal viruses a “baseless conspiracy theory,” but that it was a racist conspiracy theory for good measure. Moreover, it is outrageous how American technology giants like Facebook banned all information suggesting the lab leak theory for nearly two years. 

 

As this article details, during its early days in power, the Biden administration had exerted so much pressure on Facebook that the tech giant was removing joke memes about the possibility of the Covid vaccines being dangerous. The government’s attempt to exert pressure on a private media company to influence its content is censorship in its purest, most reprehensible form. Critics of this policy today are labeled as, of course, “conspiracy theorists.

 

But who is mostly to blame for this weaponization of the term “conspiracy?” I would still argue that it’s the conspiracy culture itself. It’s still the clown world of QAnon and people who had never gotten the note that the eighties are over and there are no global Satanic cults running daycare centers—or pizza parlors—and performing blood-drinking rituals in tunnels deep under the earth. There is, however, the despicable evil of global sex-trafficking organized crime rings, organizations that engage in the trafficking of children as well as adults. They do exist and they constitute a $150 billion a year industry. The problem, however, is that warnings of the existence of these crime syndicates have now been tainted by conspiracism. It becomes harder for some to talk about global crime rings when the discussion raises the echoes of State of the Nation, QAnon, and the madness of their conspiracy theories.

 

Likewise, many had been perfectly comfortable with the censorship of any discussion and debate about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of draconian lockdown measures, and the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters. As we now know, however, Covid most likely came from a Wuhan lab, the most restrictive of lockdown measures during the pandemic proved to be no more effective in stopping the spread of the virus than the most lax of the Covid policies, and many people who had been vaccinated and boosted still got sick from Covid and still spread the virus. But the madness of conspiracy world helped kill off any tolerance for debate, discussion, and the questioning of official narratives about the pandemic.

 

And that is the true danger of conspiracism.

Facts, fiction, conspiracies, and Dungeons and Dragons

A new film based on the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game opened this weekend and I am quoted in this special edition magazine exploring all aspects of the game, its history, development, fan community, and fans who had played the games since childhood who are now major A-list stars.

If you see the magazine above on rack in a store, be sure and pick up a copy—or 5—for all of your friends and family members.

 

But most of my quotes appear in story about one of the strangest controversies that engulfed the game starting in the late 1970s. Following the suicide of James Dallas Egbert, a mentally ill college student in 1979 who also happened to be an avid D&D player, unwarranted speculation followed that perhaps the immersive fantasy world of D&D had the power to push young people to self-destruction and violence. But Egbert’s death also coincided with the “Satanic Panic” of that decade, a bizarre moral panic about a vast, international conspiracy of Satanists running daycare centers across America, sexually assaulting and murdering children in occult rituals, and seducing other youngsters to Devil-worship through heavy metal music, violent films, and, of course, a fantasy-oriented game like Dungeons and Dragons.

 

Check out a more detailed read of the history of the Satanic panic right here. I also wrote about the phenomenon in my book, CONSPIRACY FILMS: A TOUR OF DARK PLACES IN THE AMERICAN CONSCIOUS.

 

What is more bizarre than the claims of this layered, convoluted myth is how long the moral panic it created lasted. It took another decade until level-headed, intelligent people finally made peace with the fact there was no vast underground of Satanists, despite the fact that there was barely a scintilla of evidence for any of these allegations from the moment the very panic began. The reason for this, however, is the conspiratorial mindset it was all founded on. Conspiracism is founded on the very logical fallacy that no evidence for the existence of a massive conspiracy theory is evidence in itself. There is no evidence of a massive conspiracy of the Dallas Police Department, the FBI, CIA, oil barons, bankers, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, or weapons manufacturers having killed Joh F. Kennedy, this line of thinking argues, because the evil cabal behind the conspiracy made all the evidence disappear. There isn’t a shred of credible evidence for the Moon-landing-hoax conspiracy theory or the 9/11 conspiracy theories because the hidden forces of evil made that evidence disappear. The result of all of this, however, is that the conspiracists will wind up living in a fantasy land, in a delusion created by their own minds.

 

At least people playing Dungeons and Dragons know that it’s all a game, it’s all make-believe. It was only their critics, the conspiracy theorists, and the moral crusaders who wound up not being able to tell fact from fiction.

A Call for an Uprising...to find all those missing pets?

 

I recently spent a little time watching a YouTube video from Call for an Uprising since its fans have been responding so vigorously to my last post about the channel. Afterward I did some Googling for information about a sudden surge in animal disappearances and—no surprise here—couldn’t really find anything.

So why did I look for information about missing animals, you might ask. Well, one of their recent videos included a very surreal and disjointed rant about this past Friday the 13^thcoinciding with the Harvest Moon and how there is supposed to be Satanic activity at an all-time high when that happens. In a rather quick rant—sounding quite rushed, sloppy, and even more unhinged than the usual videos from this channel—the narrator unleashed a sort of stream of consciousness ramble about Satanic cults performing rituals during the Harvest Moon and on Friday 13^thand how on both of these occasions household pets go missing at a greater frequency than most other times. Again, since the 13^thand the Harvest Moon fell on the same date, pets were supposed to have been disappearing left and right.

So far I’ve found no evidence in the news—national or local—for any sort of an increase in pet disappearances this past Friday. The reason for this, Uprising fans will, I’m certain, soon point out, is that the mainstream media is keeping all of this hidden because they are under the control of the Illuminati Satanists. Instead of putting this massive media-machine cover-up to use, I’m not sure why the Satanists wouldn’t just go and buy some cats and dogs—or whatever else it is they need to sacrifice—from some animal shelters. Those animals are not that expensive and I’m sure it would be much less of a hassle to buy a cat or a dog than to try and steal it and then call their compatriots at the hidden Illuminati lair to squelch all police reports of mass animal disappearances. 

Plus, Uprising claims, these animal-sacrificing Satanists are all around us. They are normal-looking everyday people. They could be your next-door neighbor. You might even see them at church on Sunday because they claim to be good Christians. It’s only behind closed doors that their true evil nature is revealed! Pretty scary stuff, right? It could make for a really nifty horror movie late night on the SyFy channel, or a low-budget offering on Netflix. But I’m just wondering about the efficiency of all that animal-stealing. If these vicious blood-thirsty Satanists are the people next door, then wouldn’t they need to hold down day jobs? So when would they find the time to make the plans to steal the animals? Uprising makes it sound like the animal thefts are committed on Friday the 13^th, but I’m wondering why the Satanists couldn’t have stolen the animals earlier, just so everything is all set and ready to go for Friday night. Stealing your neighbor’s dog on Friday, after a long day of work, sounds rough and way too risky. I mean I must admit that on Friday afternoon, after a long day and a long week of work, I’m pretty beat. I’m not sure that I would have the stamina to go out and try and steal a cat or a dog, plus make it to my local coven’s shadowy headquarters for the Black Mass and the sacrifice.

But the rest of the episode is full of these kinds of logical inconsistencies. Just check it out for yourself for a few laughs. My second favorite howler of a claim is that the Satanic panic of the 1980s was actually manufactured by the world-wide Luciferian conspiracy. So that absurd moral panic was created by Satanists—arguing that there was a world-wide Luciferian conspiracy—in order to have the whole thing collapse, get debunked by everyone from local police agencies to the FBI (all part of the Satanic underground, I presume) so that they could keep on worshiping the Dark Lord of Hell in privacy and not be suspected by anyone. Hmm…interesting! So then why not just worship in private in the beginning and why bring the topic of Satan into the mainstream conversation. 

So the arguments in this video were so vague and completely lacking in one single iota, one scintilla, one shred of evidence that could prove any of its crazed, feverish rambling, that I just had to do a little investigating and look at the new Call for an Uprising web page. Maybe there would be some discussion of actual evidence to prove these claims. Maybe there was a hint of how the mysterious figure behind this channel uncovered the secrets of the Satanists and lived to tell the tale. But all I found was the requirement to pay $2.99 a month for a membership before being given access to the site. I declined to do that.

As it should be obvious to any intelligent person here, A Call for an Uprising is not merely the handiwork of an unconscionable con artist, but perhaps one of the most audacious con artists who ever plied his trade on gullible, impressionable victims.