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Conspiray Theories for Dummy!
Most conspiracy theories can be divided into three categories. The first consists of those that are merely absurd. For instance, many people believe that the 1969 moon landing was a hoax with the footage of Neil Armstrong landing on lunar soil faked in a Hollywood studio. Some trashy American tabloids made millions by suggesting, for over a decade after his death, that Elvis Presley was still alive. More recently, it has been suggested that the man they executed in Baghdad was Saddam Hussein’s double. The real Saddam is alive and well and living in South America. Similarly, it used to be suggested that the man the South African government released from prison was not really Nelson Mandela. (Which would explain why he looked nothing like the photographs of the young Mandela.)
According to this theory, the real Mandela died in jail and a more accommodating double was asked to play the role.
Then there’s the kind of conspiracy theory that is spread by interested parties or by people with their own axes to grind. The most notable of these theories is the view espoused by many fascists about Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews. According to assorted anti-Semites and neo-Nazis (and these days, Arab extremists) the Holocaust never really happened. The Jews were not killed. The whole story was Jewish propaganda.
Arab fundamentalists have taken this a step further. It is now routine to say, on the Arab main street, that poor Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11. It was done by Mossad so that the peace-loving hermits of al-Qaeda would get a bad name. Another version of the theory casts the Americans as villains, eagerly murdering their own people only so that they had an excuse to defame blameless Islamic organisations.
Some of this theorising stems from a guilty conscience. At some level, the fascists must know that Hitler did kill the Jews. Even those who blame Mossad for 9/11 must be aware of the identities of the Arab perpetrators.
The trouble with conspiracy theories that emanate from interested parties is that they are hardly ever based on any solid evidence. For this kind of theorist, motive alone is evidence enough.
But there’s a third category of conspiracy theory and that is the one that is the most problematic.
Whether we like it or not, there are conspiracies, cover-ups, abuses of power by authorities and unexplained assassinations. Just as it is quite wrong to say that everything that happens is caused by a secret conspiracy, it is as foolish to claim that nothing is ever the result of a conspiracy.
Take the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Even though there were many unexplained factors — the exact motive of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin; the convenient shooting of Oswald in custody; the inconsistencies of the forensic evidence, etc. — those who smelt a conspiracy were denounced and referred to the report of the Warren Commission that concluded that Oswald had acted alone.
We know now that the conspiracy theorists were right to be suspicious. Even those who still believe that Oswald was the killer now concede that they may have been a larger conspiracy behind the assassination.
While on the subject of JFK, what about the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe? In the 70s, many writers suggested that she was having a clandestine affair with JFK and had to be bumped off. These suggestions were pooh-poohed by know-it-alls. In fact, we now have proof that Monroe was definitely having an affair with JFK. And while the evidence that friends of the Kennedys bumped her off is less than conclusive, there is a certainly a good case to be made.
That’s the problem with dismissing conspiracy theories. Once you say that all such theories are humbug, you effectively deny people the right to be curious, to ask questions and to refuse to believe what they are told by their governments.
The hallmark of an intelligent democracy is skepticism. All politicians lie. It is our duty to constantly question them, to not accept everything we are told and to find out the truth.
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