The Nonpartisan Guide to Conspiracy Theory
What is propaganda-hacking? Why do we support people who don't support us? And do you ever get the sense that conspiracy theorists are just capitalists dressed as activists?...
Theories that don't pass even the most basic reality check are a perfect way to attract the fools most easily parted from their money. And that is, I would suggest, the primary reason why such theories exist.
The world of conspiracy theory is a pretty toxic menagerie, filled as it is with some deeply unsavoury ideological stances, hate-group recruitment campaigns, political, religious and commercial agenda, and flat-out insanity.
Yet dismissing the notion of conspiracy outright is just as insane as believing that the Earth is an inexplicably pancake-shaped freak in a network of wall to wall globes. Authority is corrupt. We know that. History - even recent history - is absolutely littered with irrefutable and fully-acknowledged conspiracy.
And the worldviews fed to us by the official propaganda machine can be just as impossible to reconcile as those extolled by deplatformed conspiracists. On the one hand, for example, we're told we should live by "Christian" values. On the other we're told we should worship capitalists who would rather employ Hitler than Jesus...
"Nah, didn't like the long-haired "charitable" character in the sandals at all. I mean, we're a BUSINESS, not a bloody charity!!!! Let's go for the smartly dressed guy with the warp-factor leadership skills and limitless ambition. The one who says he can foster new levels of discipline and will go to any lengths to achieve a position of global dominance. Really impressed by him, and I liked his suggestion of a company uniform too." - Capitalism rejecting Jesus and hiring Hitler
I'M DOCTOR JEKYLL AND HE'S MISTER HYDE
So this "be like Jesus" thing is extremely selective. The machine is constantly telling us: be kind, generous, honest, helpful and submissive towards authority; but be miserly, uncharitable, two-faced, false, ruthless, manipulative and controlling on behalf of authority. That dichotomy perfectly reveals what authority really is. And whilst this might work as a directive, it doesn't work as an ideology, because it takes two completely converse mentalities, neither of which makes any sense unless we discard the other. So we go through life with a perpetually contorted cognitive grid which is continually profiling us as bipolar.
Because money is used as the sole justification for this Jekyll and Hyde behavioural model we're all expected to follow, those who are not greatly benefitting from the monetary system are far more likely to object to authority's contradictory messaging than those who are. Which is one of the reasons why people with lower incomes are more drawn to anti-establishment messaging like conspiracy theory. And further, when life seems, or indeed is, unfair, it's only natural to blame the people who run the system. So if someone comes along with an anti-establishment message, they can appear to be both an ally and the road to solution.
Most of the time, however, the establishment and the anti-establishment are just two manifestations of the same dynamic.
It's all a maze of propaganda. The only thing that differs is the agenda. Think about it. How many times do you drop onto a conspiracy theorist's website, video channel or whatever, without being hit with a call to action? Be that a donation prompt, a political/religious nudge, or a sales promotion, in the end it's just someone trying to get you to serve their interests. Exactly like the authorities.
Most "activism" is just capitalism in a thin disguise.
PROPAGANDA-HACKING
And it's not just the anti-establishment that gains from anti-establishment propaganda. In the course of relatively recent history we've entered an age of intensified "propaganda-hacking", in which authoritarians dress themselves up as their own opposition, and then twist the agenda to suit themselves. It's not a new phenomenon. The idea of controlled opposition extends right back through political history. Lenin is reputed to have said:
"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." - Vladimir Lenin
But in modern times we've seen monopolist corporations adopting this principle with gusto. Google - an entity with more authoritarian power than many governments - has shown itself to be a master of controlled opposition. It both creates, and buys its way into, "escape routes" from its Big Brother empire, and then routes each "escape" straight back into its own prison. The rationale is very simple. Become your own competition. Then there is no alternative.
But in order to become your own competition you have to pretend to oppose yourself. If you can get third parties to do that, whilst also serving your agenda in a very controlled manner, it's dazzlingly convincing. Most people, for example, still see Mozilla as an arch rival to Google, even though Mozilla has straightforwardly been Google-by-proxy for two decades.
The "Indieweb" concept, on which I wrote an extensively-researched exposé, epitomises Google's manufacture of pretend revolutionism for its own gain. But that's only one droplet in a sea of schemes. The gamut stretches from pretend privacy advocates like Mozilla, through pretend activists like Cory Doctorow (who has spent decades lobbying for the corporate lawlessness that spawned the "enshittification" he's spent the past year and a half performatively whining about), to pretend alternative ecosystems like Tor. They've all delivered Google's propaganda dressed up as anti-establishment revolutionism. And it's the very sense that they represent an opposition to "Big Tech" that has brought them, and their puppetmasters, success.
Google's front door gets pelted with rotten tomatoes, whilst its cosy associates shovel in the data and money through the back door. It's become a tiringly familiar theme.
Beneath Google there's a wealth of smaller brands trading on this same revolutionism ticket - many of them part of Google's controlled opposition scheme. Such as Startpage, which is an American surveillance operation masquerading as a Dutch pillar of privacy. And beneath them, a motley array of mouthpieces with an activist or conspiracist message but a capitalist agenda. Rob Braxman for instance, whose videos complain bitterly about the surveillance industry whilst recommending the use of Startpage, for money. Propaganda-hacking on steroids. Google's front door gets pelted with rotten tomatoes, whilst its cosy associate Startpage shovels in the data and money through the back door. It's become a tiringly familiar theme.
CENSORSHIP MINUS OFFENSIVENESS EQUALS GUILT...
At the risk of being labelled a conspiracist - if indeed that even is still a risk on an Internet that censors everyone who isn't either a corporate-backed propaganda machine or a shop - I'm going to talk about the Apollo Moon landings of 1969 to 1972.
I'm not going to express a verdict on the landings themselves. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that. But we can all agree that the official story is very widely contested. And there are some important elements that set the Moon landing topic apart from the your more typical conspiracy theory....
- It has no racist connotations.
- It doesn't glorify Hitler.
- It doesn't invalidate genocide.
- It's demonstrably compatible with mainstream TV.
- It doesn't attract complaints when it's aired.
This is not an offensive theory. So one would expect that we could all be afforded access to viewpoints from both sides of the fence and left to make up our own minds.
I mean, does it really matter if Joe Bloggs seeks the most obvious explanation for NASA's inability to get a human beyond the Earth's own Thermosphere in any of the 50+ years since the corrupt, scandalous and fraudulent presidency of Nixon?
Does it matter if Jasmina Bloggs wants a second opinion on how the fuck NASA got a Moon Buggy to grip the ground when performing a U-turn on loose soil in 16% gravity?
Does it matter if society wonders why, when your granny tries to eBay anything NASA handed to her husband as "Moon rock", NASA comes at her with guns?
Does it matter if people are irrevocably suspicious at NASA's propensity to sue its own astronauts when they attempt to sell a space souvenir?
The answer is yes - apparently, it does matter.
Apparently, it is unacceptable for anyone to have any level of suspicion at all that the Moon landing story may have incorporated even the teensiest-weensiest hint of a fib.
A good maxim for those who want an instinctive verdict on a given conspiracy theory is: if the debunkists are busier than the conspiracists, there's most likely some truth in it.
On our predominant discovery resources, search results for moon landings fake are so painstakingly pumped with "debunking" hysteria and stripped of pro-conspiracy viewpoints that they appear to have been assembled by NASA themselves. When it comes to unofficial views, even professional journalists are calculatedly thrust out of the visible echelons in favour of literal shitposts whose only contribution to the conversation is worshipping NASA and pretending conspiracies don't exist at all.
Media outlets and "fact-checkers" are breathless from screaming "IT DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY HAPPENED!!!!!" at the tops of their voices. Despite the fact that most of their writers have no specialist knowledge and were yet to be born when the events allegedly unfolded, nearly a quarter of a million miles away from Earth, with no independent witnesses. Despite the fact that NASA have endlessly been on the back foot trying to explain evidence which is so full of blatant anomalies and suspicion that it wouldn't satisfy a researcher's preliminaries in a current news story.
I will take seriously the writings of a thirty-something blogger who says "I believe NASA". I will not take seriously the writings of a thirty-something blogger who says "I vouch for NASA". We have to be aware of that distinction. The writings I respect the most come from people who've done a lot of research, and conclude "I'm still not sure". That's authenticity. The verdict instantly tells us that there's no agenda.
THE LAUNDRY
Just as elite cybertech has evidently conspired to exclude certain information sources from its discovery resources, it's evidently conspired to give certain information sources invariable precedence. The most obvious case of which is a go-to Silicon Valley propaganda-laundering factory called Wikipedia.
Wikipedia offers two main articles on the Moon landings: an official story and a conspiracy analysis. But beyond the titles, both pages present exactly the same narrative, with NASA invariably getting the last word. And there's no comment on any of the most compelling elements in the conspiracy allegations. True, you can ascribe that to neglect as opposed to propagandism. But all benefit of the doubt ends with this little nugget, straight out of the used car salesman's book of marketing standards...
"The conspiracy would have to involve more than 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, the 12 men who walked on the Moon, the 6 others who flew with them as command module pilots, and another 6 astronauts who orbited the Moon. Hundreds of thousands of people – including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers – would have had to keep the secret." - Wikipedia
That's not how a scientist debunks a conspiracy theory. That's how a marketing department debunks a conspiracy theory. Willingly dishonest, and instantly dismissable by anyone who even vaguely considers who would, or would not have needed to be told the secret in the first place. It's perfectly sufficient to say that the risk of whistleblowing would have been very significant. You don't have to spin a Del Trotter sales pitch in order to make that point. Which goes to show us what the Wikipedia Moon Landing Conspiracy page really is.
Propaganda.
It's not about presenting both sides of an argument. It's about making people believe one side of an argument. And that's my real objection.
I don't have a problem with people believing the landings took place, and I don't have a problem with people believing they didn't. Since 1986, when the Challenger disaster set me thinking about the phenomenal danger and unpredictability of even relatively local space travel, I've constantly argued with myself about what really happened. I do have a problem with palm-greased propaganda mills trying to organise public belief.
If you're shouting it like your paycheque depends on it, your paycheque probably does depend on it.
Wikipedia is the embodiment of this. If you're ever in doubt as to Wikipedia's real allegiances, read its insipid, non-committal-to-the-point-of-trolling account of evil corporations. 580 mealy-mouthed words on the psycho-led gangs who literally kill their employees, extort the public, and are destroying humanity itself at a rate that not even Hannibal Lecter would approve. The takeaway is that corporations are only portrayed as evil, that Google is only accused of secret data collection (despite the endless array of proven cases), and that Wal-Mart can't really be evil because a lot of people shop there. That's pretty much the entire article.
Then there's the Copyright page. Properly digesting this takes more reading and an understanding of Silicon Valley's anti-copyright stance. The article asserts "digital rights" propaganda, in which copyright is cast not as the labour law and workers' rights protection it really is, but as a route to higher prices and capitalist exploitation. For example...
"After copyright law became established (in 1710 in England and Scotland, and in the 1840s in German-speaking areas) the low-price mass market vanished, and fewer, more expensive editions were published; distribution of scientific and technical information was greatly reduced." - Wikipedia
And...
"The most significant point is that patent and copyright laws support the expansion of the range of creative human activities that can be commodified. This parallels the ways in which capitalism led to the commodification of many aspects of social life that earlier had no monetary or economic value per se." - Wikipedia
Both of these insertions come with desperate citations. The first attributes by proxy, twice, to an obscure, sensationalist, and consensus-opposed anti-copyright book, which was written in German by Eckhard Höffner, and which has relentlessly been used to back the anti-copyright narrative of the "digital rights" circus.
One of the two proxied references was written by a Silicon Valley "digital rights" shill who admitted he hadn't read Höffner's book, and was basing his article on a review of the book. The other proxied ref is just the review. Despite the same chant being reiterated farther down the Wiki page and attributed to Höffner by name, the book itself is never referenced directly. Only the "digital rights" spin or the book review on which it's based.
Across the full page there are at least four uses of Höffner as an authority source, without a single citation of his actual work. The persistent trawling of Höffner's remarks is incredible in itself given his irrelevance, obscurity and lack of portfolio, as compared with a pro-copyright authority like David Lowery, who has first-hand experience as a highly successful professional artist. But again, it's not about presenting an inclusive vision. It's about pushing a corporate agenda, for $millions in Google bucks.
The second insertion cites this guy, described as a "nutty professor" before he was murdered in 2016. And it should be noted that both insertions, despite neither having any relevance to the definition of copyright (and the second being the mere opinion of someone labelled by his own students as "nutty"), appear near the top of a very long article. The inserts are clearly hijacks, intended to set copyright in a bad light, without recognition of writing or art as WORK, and without context of the damage artists suffer in copyright's absence. Indeed, Wikipedia soon doubles down, stating, after a deliberately obtuse fact-dodge on the subject of damage to artists...
"Other reports indicate that copyright infringement does not have an adverse effect on the entertainment industry, and can have a positive effect." - Wikipedia
The citation for that, once again written in German, literally states that rightsholders reported a drop in income due to copyright infringement.
And notice how forthright the language is in these attacks on copyright, as compared with he non-committal language in the Evil Corp whitewash.
This is Google talking. It's Google's self-serving, anti-copyright propaganda, laundered through an apparently independent resource. The breadth and penetration of Google's anti-copyright agenda, along with a companion censorship of opposing, pro-copyright views, is a conspiracy in itself. The narrative has been pushed deep into the education system and extends right the way up into direct political lobby. A single glance at the state of the Web reveals that a quarter of a century of copyright lawlessness has reduced a once vibrant tapestry of creativity to a mire of robot spew. Surprise, surprise - Silicon Valley's anti-copyright conspiracy ended up serving only Silicon Valley.
That's why we have to stop buying into secondhand rhetoric and think for ourselves. The propaganda machine exploits our laziness, feeding us any narrative of its choosing in the knowledge that we won't check the independent assessments for ourselves. And ultimately, it's our blind acceptance of everything authority and its henches tell us, that prevents us from protesting about our slow and painful subjugation.
In order that we can protest effectively, we have to understand things. And the role of the propaganda-laundry - Wikipedia plus a huge expanse of similarly co-opted silos and media sites - is to make sure that we don't.
TAKE YOUR OWN SIDE
I've talked before about the way we take sides, adopting ideologies as packages of values. Packages that are pre-assembled by other people, to benefit other people. These ideological packages have the same dynamics as commercial bundles. A bit of what we do want, accompanied by some piece of crap that no one in their right mind would ever buy were it not shoved into a box with some desirables.
He's not insane. He's just a born-again bullshit artist.
All professional conspiracy theorists use the above system, at a preset ratio, to disseminate self-serving crap. Self-serving crap that they know is self-serving crap, and that they know no one would accept if they didn't box it up with heady ideology.
I'm old enough to remember David Icke presenting the snooker on BBC1. Believe it or not he was the best presenter on those snooker programmes. Intelligent, likeable and devoid of the judgemental superiority that afflicted other names on the presenting rota at that time. A communicator who fostered trust. The people's presenter, if you like. Then he got pissed off with it, packed it in, and a year or two later he turned up on the Wogan show claiming to be the son of God.
He's not insane. He's just a born-again bullshit artist. A blagger. A classic, capitalist demagogue using his finely-honed ability as a communicator to deliver heady ideology, bundled with self-serving crap. Attracting impressionable fools is his job, just like every other professional conspiracist or demagogue. That's why his theories are so demented, and completely misaligned with his otherwise intelligent demeanour. Theories that don't pass even the most basic reality check are a perfect way to attract the fools most easily parted from their money. And that is, I would suggest, the primary reason why such theories exist.
Both the authorities, and demagogues like Icke, have learned to hack our supportive instincts for their own gain. They bait us into taking their side, by pretending to take ours. But in truth, the only side they take is their own. Which means we're investing in something that has no real return. And it gets worse...
When harnessed collectively, the support we provide becomes a currency of power.
Trust is vulnerability. That's why power never grants it.
Supportiveness comes instinctively to us, because as a breed we're designed to partner and raise offspring. In those natural situations we're supporting people who really do need our support, or we're receiving reciprocal support - which means the empowerment is balanced. But in collectively providing support to people who don't even know us, and who are already hugely more empowered than we are, all we're doing is adding more weight to an imbalance of power. Which is exactly what creates authority in the first place.
So ironically, cheerleading anti-establishment figures eventually just creates a new authority, with all the negative connotations that entails.
The way to avoid this continuing cycle of creating new authorities is for us to support ourselves rather than "thought leaders". Champion our own, individual compilations of views and needs. Compilations designed to suit us. This stems the huge excess build-up of support that results in overblown power, whilst making us much more difficult to exploit or manipulate. The root of most brainwashing is our desire to fit in. To be accepted and belong to a group. A group that says:
"You're not allowed to hold that belief in our group. So revise your ideological position accordingly or we are rejecting you."
And whether it's the establishment, the anti-establishment or the controlled opposition, that message is loud and clear. "Think what we tell you to think, or face the consequences."
But d'you know what? Fuck your group! Its my brain and I am not being told what I can and can't think. I would rather admit ignorance than be a walking ad board for someone else's propaganda campaign. There's no shame in being a 'don't know'. There's no shame in rejecting one theory without citing an alternative. You don't have to accept shit in the absence of gold. Sometimes, just accepting nothing is the most sensible option.
KEEP AN OPEN MIND
One of the most liberating statements you can make in the propaganda war is: "I'M NOT IN A POSITION TO JUDGE". The fact that so few of us do say that is a testament to the grip that propaganda has on our worldview. Don't trust the establishment. But don't trust the anti-establishment either. Trust is vulnerability. That's why power never grants it.