Top 10 Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists
UFO sightings. Hoaxed moon landings. Conspiracies to commit murder and assassinations. Tragic events that never happened and were staged by politicians. These assertions are made by Conspiracy Theorists all the time. The most recent one involved Paul McCartney. Several Conspiracy Theorists asserted that McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced with a doppelganger. Conspiracy theories, as you probably already notice, often crop up during times of uncertainty and fear: after terrorist strikes, financial crises, high-profile deaths and natural disasters. I’ve taken the time to collect 10 characteristics that would help you identify them quickly and with ease.
1. Arrogance
They are always fact-seekers, questioners, people who are trying to discover the truth: sceptics are always “sheep”, patsies for Messrs Bush and Blair etc.
2. Relentlessness.
They will always go on and on about a conspiracy no matter how little evidence they have to go on or how much of what they have is simply discredited. (Moreover, as per 1. above, even if you listen to them ninety-eight times, the ninety-ninth time, when you say “no thanks”, you’ll be called a “sheep” again.) Additionally, they have no capacity for precis whatsoever. They go on and on at enormous length.
3. Inability to answer questions.
For people who loudly advertise their determination to the principle of questioning everything, they’re pretty poor at answering direct questions from sceptics about the claims that they make.
4. Fondness for certain stock phrases
These include Cicero’s “cui bono?” (of which it can be said that Cicero understood the importance of having evidence to back it up) and Conan Doyle’s “once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth”. What these phrases have in common is that they are attempts to absolve themselves from any responsibility to produce positive, hard evidence themselves: you simply “eliminate the impossible” (i.e. say the official account can’t stand scrutiny) which means that the wild allegation of your choice, based on “cui bono?” (which is always the government) is therefore the truth.
5. Inability to employ or understand Occam’s Razor
Aided by the principle in 4. above, conspiracy theorists never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.
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Langley Virginia must be having a quiet day.
The “small inconsistencies” in the 9-11 narrative, and the moon landings narrative, and the JFK / RFK / MLK narrative, and the Pearl Harbor narrative, and the Gulf of Tonkin narrative, and the Operation Northwoods narrative, and the Maidan narrative, and the Syria narrative, and the Libya narrative, and the Russia narrative, and the US economic recovery narrative, and the Bohemian Grove narrative; all these are just “conspiracy theories”, a term first used by that great defender of American liberties, the CIA.
Think I’ll just stick with Cicero and Conan Doyle on this one.