The Conspiracist Worldview and its Political Assumption

[Severian]

This is a useful site - publiceye.org - which deals with conspiracy theories among other political topics. It points out some of the common features of numerous conspiracy theories. And the faulty assumptions behind the worldview that claims that vast, improbably perfect conspiracies make the world go around.

Summary: Conspiracism is a narrative form of scapegoating that portrays an enemy as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good. Conspiracism assigns tiny cabals of evildoers a superhuman power to control events, frames social conflict as part of a transcendent struggle between Good and Evil, and makes leaps of logic, such as guilt by association, in analyzing evidence. Conspiracists often employ common fallacies of logic in analyzing factual evidence to assert connections, causality, and intent that are frequently unlikely or nonexistent. As a distinct narrative form of scapegoating, conspiracism uses demonization to justify constructing the scapegoats as wholly evil while reconstructing the scapegoater as a hero.

Conspiracism portal page (http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/index.html) with links to the various pages and articles on the subject

Some highlights:
Dynamics of Conspiracist Scapegoating (http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/conspiracism.html)

Conspiracism as a Flawed Worldview (http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/conspiracism.html)

The Political Assumptions of Conspiracism (http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/conspiracism-07.html#P99_30362)

Post 9/11 Conspiracism (http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/conspiracism-911.html)

I'd be happy to discuss any of that material with anyone who has comments on or questions about it.

[Gravy]

Good stuff there, Severian. I've copied your post to the "editorials" sticky thread above.

[CHF]

Conspiracy thinking in a nutshell:

All experts and educated people are wrong....but single guys who sit around in their underwear watching Youtube have it all figured out.

Not Bloody Likely.

[Trigood]

Thanks for posting this, Severian.... looks good.

Liked this quote:
"Our society and our culture is not a conspiracy. There are no cynics at the top of the pyramid who use their power to maintain an unnecessarily unequal society. Stratified society is perpetuated because of the self-interest that everybody has in not sinking down."
--Noel Pearson, Aboriginal activist

[twinstead]

Thanks for the post, severian.

I especially like this:
Conspiracist thinking and scapegoating are symptoms, not causes, of underlying societal frictions, and as such are perilous to ignoreThat's why we post to forums like this; it's not as if we could convince a hard-core CT of anything, but they need to be addressed.

[Severian]

Glad you liked it, folks. And I think it fills a need: debunking particular conspiracy claims needs to be done, but it's a bit like playing whack-a-mole. There are commonalities among most of them....

[LashL]

Thanks, Severian, and welcome to the conspiracy theories forum :)