I've always been fairly interested in conspiracy theories and have read a fair bit about them, from the fairly thought out and constructed, to the absolutely absurd.
The proponents of your more "imaginative" theories are always the most insistent. Nothing will ever challenge the validity of their theory, which will be argued with boundless energy and indignation. But good arguing required tactics.
Throughout my reading I've come across some pretty consistent tactics used by conspiracy theorists to push their agenda. I've summarised and shared them here as I think they can help anybody when they're weighing up a theory. For me I find they provide a bit of lens with which to look at the behaviour of the CTist. I find that when I start to see a few of these tactics in regular use, it's a good indicator that I'm on a road to nowhere: a theory which makes no logical sense, and an adversary who will never shift their "opinion", come hell or high logic.
So feel free to have a read / comment if you're so inclined. Obviously these don't apply to all theories or theorists, they're just some common trends I've picked up.
1. The inverted "use" of evidence - or lack thereof
CTists rarely produce credible evidence that their theory is actually true - rather, they tend to strike at any weakness in the "official story" - taking any slight gap in evidence that something occurred, and use that as hard evidence that the opposite (their conspiracy) did occur.
This isn't how proper use of evidence works - a lack of evidence that something occurred doesn't automatically itself become hard evidence that the opposite occurred... except in the mind of conspiracy theorists.
2. The internet as a bible
It's revolutionised many aspect of life, and it's no different for the CTist. It's given a worldwide audience for their theories, and allowed networking with each other across the planet.
There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with this - it's the benefits the internet offers us all. Suffice to say however, nobody owns the internet (well not according to them, but anyway) - anybody and everybody can upload whatever they like, and thus everything must be treated with caution, and some things with the proverbial grain of salt.
One simple way to think of the web is as the digitised version of everything we used to have - the man handing it out his leaflets outside Flinders St station 20 years ago now merely uploads it to his website.
Ask a conspiracy theorist for reliable evidence however, and you'll invariably be bombarded by endless links to websites written by god knows who - an endless supply of unknown kooks, spivs, bullshit artists, imbeciles, the impossibly bored and the possibly insane. As if it means something.
"It's on the internet? It must be true!"
3. Intellectual and social condescension
CTists will talk down to people who question their theories, attempting to present as deep thinking intellectuals who are simply smarter and more inquisitive than everybody else. Hopefully it'll bring people over to their views - nobody wants to be on the stupid team, do they?
You've heard them all - sheep, sheeple, brainless masses under government control, proles, luddites, simpletons... etc.
4. It's part of the cover-up!!!
Found some hard facts that you're convinced will skewer a conspiracy theory?
Don't bother.
You see, in the world of the conspiracy theorist, there are two types of facts - those that support the theory, and those that don't. Yet funnily enough, they both have the same impact - in the mind of the CTist, they both strengthen his case.
Something supporting the theory is obviously welcomed eagerly. Something that doesn't support it, well that's fine, because it simply becomes part of the conspiracy anyway - and in fact further "proof" of it!
Of course that fact you've found is presented the way it is - they want you to believe that! They've manufactured it to convince the sheeple! It's part of the cover-up!
So don't bother - far from disproving anything, your facts will simply be used to bolster the conspiracy by virtue of "proving" a cover-up.
This is the basic reason why you CANNOT win an argument with a CTist: a conspiracy theory can never be wrong - only bigger, and more far-reaching.
Which leads to the next point...
5. The endlessly expanding conspiracy
One thing you'll notice about conspiracy theories - although their proponents are trying desperately to spread the word, those directly or indirectly involved are all, to a man, forever like-minded people determined to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses. This can include a few people, dozens of people, thousands of people... it doesn't matter how many, they're all in on it, and not a single one of them has a conscience for truth, nor has anybody EVER slipped up in the keeping up of the official story (ie, followed basic human nature).
The bigger the story, the more "insiders" there are. Take the grandfather of them all, the JFK assassination. Do a bit of reading and you'll soon see that CTists have implicated, amongst others: Kruschev / Russia, Castro / Cuba, Cuban rebels hellbent on revenge, the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the ONI, senior and mid-level military leaders, the Italian Mafia, the weapons manufacturing industry, LBJ, Nixon, southern white democrats, the wider Democrat party, a posse of unnamed yet influential southern businessmen, the Republican Party, RFK (the man's brother...), a mysterious group of rich Dallas closet homosexuals led by Clay Shaw, the Dallas police, Jack Ruby, local and national media, Chief Justice Earl Warren and his investigatory board, unidentified tramps...
You get the picture. All these people (and more) either knocked JFK or helped cover it up. Hell, Lee Harvey Oswald might have had a hand it in as well. Not that he or any of the other thousands of conspirators have ever admitted or leaked anything.
There's so many players that in the interests of cinematic expediency, poor Oliver Stone had to use a couple of fictional characters (Willie O'Keefe and the infamous "Mr X") to merge all the allegations together - there's no way this cast was fitting into a single script.
Who killed JFK? What you really need to ask is... who didn't kill JFK?
6. Smokebombing
On that rare occasion many CTists are cornered by pesky logic, you'll see there won't be an answer or admission either way - it'll simply be ignored, and before you can say "Care to answer my question?", they'll have slipped off to some other, completely unrelated tangent, arguing with another person. Harder to pin down than Gary Ablett Jr, and perhaps of similar mind to Gary Ablett Sr.
7. Question everything. EVERYTHING.
The initial motus operandi of any CTist is to plant and sow the seeds of doubt. The more doubt that can be thrown over something, the more fertile the ground for growing "alternative" theories.
The easiest way to do this is to simply ask questions. But where most will look at something, and ask questions if they're not completely clear on it, the trick of the CTist is to look at things that are completely clear, and question them anyway. This attempts to sow seeds of doubt where there may not even be soil.
The trick is to simply demand answers on terms that cannot possibly be provided. It really is, even if only by pure semantics, possible to cast some level of doubt over absolutely anything, no matter how ridiculous.
An example: I have a theory that Hawthorn actually threw Easter Monday's game against Geelong for the bookmakers, and to help do so they secretly substituted out star Cyril Rioli, Fine Cotton style, for an identical lookalike with zero football ability. I established this by watching him play on Monday.
So as a CTist, my questions would be: Do you KNOW it was Cyril on Monday? Please post some HARD evidence that it was actually Cyril Rioli. I mean hard, documentary evidence. You can't? Well then... how do you know? You obviously don't!
(And now, look back at point 1 above)
The continued asking of "unanswerable" questions is the ultimate time waster. Such filibustering only serves to seemingly build more doubt as time drags on.
What's funny is that this absurd questioning is always hailed by CTists as an admirable pursuit (for use in point number 3 above). They're thinkers, they question everything, they're not like the brainless masses being led around by the dark, mysterious powers that be.
Thoughtful, searching questioning is extremely useful. Endless, pointless questioning is idiotic. As an old teacher of mine once said:
"There are no stupid questions, Bunk. Only stupid people."
The proponents of your more "imaginative" theories are always the most insistent. Nothing will ever challenge the validity of their theory, which will be argued with boundless energy and indignation. But good arguing required tactics.
Throughout my reading I've come across some pretty consistent tactics used by conspiracy theorists to push their agenda. I've summarised and shared them here as I think they can help anybody when they're weighing up a theory. For me I find they provide a bit of lens with which to look at the behaviour of the CTist. I find that when I start to see a few of these tactics in regular use, it's a good indicator that I'm on a road to nowhere: a theory which makes no logical sense, and an adversary who will never shift their "opinion", come hell or high logic.
So feel free to have a read / comment if you're so inclined. Obviously these don't apply to all theories or theorists, they're just some common trends I've picked up.
1. The inverted "use" of evidence - or lack thereof
CTists rarely produce credible evidence that their theory is actually true - rather, they tend to strike at any weakness in the "official story" - taking any slight gap in evidence that something occurred, and use that as hard evidence that the opposite (their conspiracy) did occur.
This isn't how proper use of evidence works - a lack of evidence that something occurred doesn't automatically itself become hard evidence that the opposite occurred... except in the mind of conspiracy theorists.
2. The internet as a bible
It's revolutionised many aspect of life, and it's no different for the CTist. It's given a worldwide audience for their theories, and allowed networking with each other across the planet.
There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with this - it's the benefits the internet offers us all. Suffice to say however, nobody owns the internet (well not according to them, but anyway) - anybody and everybody can upload whatever they like, and thus everything must be treated with caution, and some things with the proverbial grain of salt.
One simple way to think of the web is as the digitised version of everything we used to have - the man handing it out his leaflets outside Flinders St station 20 years ago now merely uploads it to his website.
Ask a conspiracy theorist for reliable evidence however, and you'll invariably be bombarded by endless links to websites written by god knows who - an endless supply of unknown kooks, spivs, bullshit artists, imbeciles, the impossibly bored and the possibly insane. As if it means something.
"It's on the internet? It must be true!"
3. Intellectual and social condescension
CTists will talk down to people who question their theories, attempting to present as deep thinking intellectuals who are simply smarter and more inquisitive than everybody else. Hopefully it'll bring people over to their views - nobody wants to be on the stupid team, do they?
You've heard them all - sheep, sheeple, brainless masses under government control, proles, luddites, simpletons... etc.
4. It's part of the cover-up!!!
Found some hard facts that you're convinced will skewer a conspiracy theory?
Don't bother.
You see, in the world of the conspiracy theorist, there are two types of facts - those that support the theory, and those that don't. Yet funnily enough, they both have the same impact - in the mind of the CTist, they both strengthen his case.
Something supporting the theory is obviously welcomed eagerly. Something that doesn't support it, well that's fine, because it simply becomes part of the conspiracy anyway - and in fact further "proof" of it!
Of course that fact you've found is presented the way it is - they want you to believe that! They've manufactured it to convince the sheeple! It's part of the cover-up!
So don't bother - far from disproving anything, your facts will simply be used to bolster the conspiracy by virtue of "proving" a cover-up.
This is the basic reason why you CANNOT win an argument with a CTist: a conspiracy theory can never be wrong - only bigger, and more far-reaching.
Which leads to the next point...
5. The endlessly expanding conspiracy
One thing you'll notice about conspiracy theories - although their proponents are trying desperately to spread the word, those directly or indirectly involved are all, to a man, forever like-minded people determined to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses. This can include a few people, dozens of people, thousands of people... it doesn't matter how many, they're all in on it, and not a single one of them has a conscience for truth, nor has anybody EVER slipped up in the keeping up of the official story (ie, followed basic human nature).
The bigger the story, the more "insiders" there are. Take the grandfather of them all, the JFK assassination. Do a bit of reading and you'll soon see that CTists have implicated, amongst others: Kruschev / Russia, Castro / Cuba, Cuban rebels hellbent on revenge, the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the ONI, senior and mid-level military leaders, the Italian Mafia, the weapons manufacturing industry, LBJ, Nixon, southern white democrats, the wider Democrat party, a posse of unnamed yet influential southern businessmen, the Republican Party, RFK (the man's brother...), a mysterious group of rich Dallas closet homosexuals led by Clay Shaw, the Dallas police, Jack Ruby, local and national media, Chief Justice Earl Warren and his investigatory board, unidentified tramps...
You get the picture. All these people (and more) either knocked JFK or helped cover it up. Hell, Lee Harvey Oswald might have had a hand it in as well. Not that he or any of the other thousands of conspirators have ever admitted or leaked anything.
There's so many players that in the interests of cinematic expediency, poor Oliver Stone had to use a couple of fictional characters (Willie O'Keefe and the infamous "Mr X") to merge all the allegations together - there's no way this cast was fitting into a single script.
Who killed JFK? What you really need to ask is... who didn't kill JFK?
6. Smokebombing
On that rare occasion many CTists are cornered by pesky logic, you'll see there won't be an answer or admission either way - it'll simply be ignored, and before you can say "Care to answer my question?", they'll have slipped off to some other, completely unrelated tangent, arguing with another person. Harder to pin down than Gary Ablett Jr, and perhaps of similar mind to Gary Ablett Sr.
7. Question everything. EVERYTHING.
The initial motus operandi of any CTist is to plant and sow the seeds of doubt. The more doubt that can be thrown over something, the more fertile the ground for growing "alternative" theories.
The easiest way to do this is to simply ask questions. But where most will look at something, and ask questions if they're not completely clear on it, the trick of the CTist is to look at things that are completely clear, and question them anyway. This attempts to sow seeds of doubt where there may not even be soil.
The trick is to simply demand answers on terms that cannot possibly be provided. It really is, even if only by pure semantics, possible to cast some level of doubt over absolutely anything, no matter how ridiculous.
An example: I have a theory that Hawthorn actually threw Easter Monday's game against Geelong for the bookmakers, and to help do so they secretly substituted out star Cyril Rioli, Fine Cotton style, for an identical lookalike with zero football ability. I established this by watching him play on Monday.
So as a CTist, my questions would be: Do you KNOW it was Cyril on Monday? Please post some HARD evidence that it was actually Cyril Rioli. I mean hard, documentary evidence. You can't? Well then... how do you know? You obviously don't!
(And now, look back at point 1 above)
The continued asking of "unanswerable" questions is the ultimate time waster. Such filibustering only serves to seemingly build more doubt as time drags on.
What's funny is that this absurd questioning is always hailed by CTists as an admirable pursuit (for use in point number 3 above). They're thinkers, they question everything, they're not like the brainless masses being led around by the dark, mysterious powers that be.
Thoughtful, searching questioning is extremely useful. Endless, pointless questioning is idiotic. As an old teacher of mine once said:
"There are no stupid questions, Bunk. Only stupid people."
