What is a Conspiracy Theory?

This is something of a response to last week's @abundance.tribe's Bi-weekly question on conspiracy theories - I'm a bit late with it, but better late than never!

I thought I'd go back and revisit @orlev's Discomfort Zone Show on 'What are Conspiracy Theories' to provide a bit of historical context to this question, and plug his most excellent show!

'Conspiracy Theory' is a term that has been demonised, and is often used to delegitimate, or simply ridicule, ideas which which challenge those in power, and those in power are ironically the people who are most likely to be acting in a conspiratorial manner.

The actual definition of a conspiracy is 'to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful act, or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of a conspiracy'.

For example, working through secret agreements made away from the public because they are either wrong or harmful.

A theory is simply something which is as yet unproven

So a conspiracy theory is any theory which believes that groups of people act in secret in order to pursue immoral or harmful agendas.

There are many conspiracies which have been uncovered throughout history by whistleblowers, and so are now fact rather than 'theories',probably the best known example of this being Edward Snowden's unveiling of the secret agenda of the NSA.

The Burning of the Reichstag

A very well known and widely accepted example of a 'conspiracy fact' is that of the burning down of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, which led to Crystal Night and was used to justify the longer-term persecution of the Jews.

At the time the Nazis told the German public that it was Jews who had burned down the Reichstag, but it was really the Nazis themselves who had done it, in order to instigate harsher control measures.

(This is so well-known it's even on the A-level History specification in the UK!)

Throughout history, this has been a fairly common control method - sacrifice a few of your citizens or monuments in order to instigate fear in the general public of a particular group of people and then use that fear to justify oppressing or going to war against people, often involving the general public in that violence.

9-11

If we now take a fresh look at 9-11, in the context of the Reichstag/ Crystal Night, it seems quite likely that this event may have been constructed in a similar vein, especially when we learn that an aeroplane or two cannot level a building by crashing into it as happened with 9-11, at least not according to laws of physics, according to the Architects and Engineers for Truth.

Given the historical context of 9-11 - the ending of cold war, the crisis of illegitimacy being faced by George Bush (he didn't win that 2000 election, remember!) - it strikes me that a conspiracy by the highest levels of (world?) government would have been very handy.

Engineer a disaster, sacrifice 3000 or so American lives and then use that to justify the invasion of Iraq (and control of their oil) and the War on Terror more generally.

Covid-19?

Now, looked at in this vein, is covid-19 the result of a consipracy?

It does seem a little too convenient - the next crisis in Capitalism was looming, America was already indebted up to its eyeballs, meaning continual war is not feasible, and low and behod along comes a virus that slows down the economy and justifies unprecendent levels of social control through the medicalisation of the mass population and criminalisation (effectively, as necessary) of public gatherings.

Even better, it discriminates against the poor, the old and ethnic minorities - so we get to wipe out more of the economically inactive and rebellious people while creating mass fear of everyone who 'might be a carrier' and setting up science and big government-big-pharma as the saviour of mankind.

Now it's early days I know, so the idea that this virus has been engineered by those in power and deliberately released may sound crazy, but history suggests this is precisely the kind of way the powerful would conspire against the ordinary folk.

Especially when one of the people set to gain most out of Covid-19 is Bill Gates, who, through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, is very well set-up to adminsiter a global programme of vaccinations for the next century.

This episode of the Corbett Report is well worth a watch - Bill Gates' Plan to Vaccinate the World - as with many conspiracies against us, it's been a LONG TIME coming!

Check out @Orlev's Discomfort Zone

I got a lot of the above ideas from one of @orlevs Discomfort Zone podcasts, then free-styled for the second half of the post!

I can recommend the show - it's on every Thursday at 23.00 GMT and @orlev deals with a range of controversial topics during the show.

The Discomfort Zone started off outlining the philosophy of the eco-villages project and now he's currently focusing on the 'deep history' of man - the processes that have led us to where we are today.

You can listen live on MSPWaves.