Conspiraphobia Runs Rampant in Both Branches of the Repucratic Party
By Servando Gonzalez
November 21, 2014
Conspiraphobia: An irrational fear of plausible conspiracy theories.
Some people who fear exposure of their wrongdoings have created discussion-stopping words to threaten and silence their critics: Zionists coined the word “anti-Semite,” militant blacks use the term “racist,” militant gays coined the word “homophobe,” and, more recently, Repucrats have been successfully using the term “conspiracy theorist” to silence their critics.
What most people ignore, however, is that the use of discussion-stopping words is one of the characteristics of totalitarian regimes. In Nazi Germany dissidents were called “vermin,” and I remember that in Castro’s totalitarian paradise, being called “gusano [worm] was the first step to being fired from your job and eventually ending up doing hard labor in a “reeducation” concentration camp.
Here in America, supposedly the land of free speech, asking a “conservative” Republican about an explanation for the collapse of WTC building 7, or asking a “liberal” Democrat about the failure to protect Americans in Benghazi, immediately gains you the for-life label of “conspiracy theorist,” — which still does not convert you into an internee in a concentration camp — at least not yet. But I am sure it puts you in a secret list of potential internees.
An interesting detail, however, is that most conspiracy theory critics actually believe in conspiracies, but only in the conspiracy theories advanced by the U.S. government. Proof of this is that both Republicans and Democrats apparently believe in the conspiracy theory advanced by George W. Bush to explain the 9/11 events.[1]
Yes, I am talking about the farfetched conspiracy theory concocted by the U.S. government, which claims that a group of rag tag fanatical Muslims, who could not have flown a Piper Cub, managed to hijack four commercial airliners using box cutters, avoided being shot down by U.S. Air Force fighter jets and expertly guided the hijacked planes to crash against the WTC twin towers and the Pentagon.
Anyway, any person who expresses doubts about the veracity of the US government’s conpiracy theory explaining the 9/11 events and offers an alternative explanation is automatically called a conspiracy theorist.
As for myself, I simply don’t care if somebody calls me a conspiracy theorist. On the other hand, given the fact that in my books and articles I back up my theories with abundant, verifiable facts, I consider myself a conspiracy analyst. Nevertheless, I think that, as a society, we are losing much with the current virtual banning of conspiracy theories.[2] In a country where Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Queer Studies, Border Studies and other purely political hogwash subjects are part of the college curricula, Conspiracy Theory, a legitimate field of study for a growing sector of the population, is totally absent, and when it is mentioned, it is done only to ridicule its proponents, calling them oddballs, tin hats, weirdoes, kooks or worse.[3]
The golden rule of conspiracies, as advanced by the CR conspirators and propagandized by their minions in the press and the academia, is known as Shallit’s Razor, which states: “Don’t attribute to conspiracy what may be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.” But, year after year, most CFR members have consistently acted against the best interest of the American people. Therefore, as former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal once pointed out,
These men are not incompetent or stupid. They are crafty and brilliant. Consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If they were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor. [4]
It is not far-fetched, though, to think that, on the contrary, what most people see as errors and failures are actually successes. The cause for this confusion is because the conspirator’s true goals are not what they claim to be.
Therefore, to Shallit’s Razor I oppose my Corollary to Shallit’s Razor: Don’t attribute to stupidity or incompetence what may be simply and adequately explained by a conspiracy. Moreover, I would like to advance what I would call Servando’s Conspiracy Law:
Human-caused events of certain type —particularly the ones detrimental to a large segment of the population, but beneficial to a small, powerful clique — which are consistently repeated over and over, are most likely not the result of chance, stupidity, or incompetence, but of a well organized conspiracy.
Obviously, we need conspiracy theories to explain many apparently unexplainable things. Proof of this is that listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other “conservative” disinformers I have found that of late one of the highest frequency words they use is “why.”
Why has Obama kept the border open to a veritable invasion of illegal aliens? Why has he not ordered a strict quarantine of Ebola victims? Why has he turned against ISIS? Why has he lied about Benghazi? Why has the Nobel Prize winner turned overnight into a Neocon-like warmonger? Why, Why, Why …
Evidently, Obama’s critics, exactly as it was with Bush’s critics, have no clue about what is really going on in this country, and they don’t know because what is going on defies normal logic. Moreover, they have no clue because, as a result of ignorance or bad faith, they are using old analysis tools to study a new phenomenon. According to them, everything is partisan politics, and just by changing the scoundrels in Washington D.C., beginning with the President, everything will be okay in America. That is precisely why some people are resorting to conspiracy theories to find logical explanations to apparently unexplainable things, and they are in the right track.
On the other hand, I have the feeling that it is not that these commentators of political events don’t know, but rather that they don’t want to know what is really going on in this country, either because they are paid to ignore it or because the truth is so terrible that it is better to ignore it. As Patrick Henry magisterially expressed, “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth…”
Why do some people resort to conspiracy theories to explain some apparently unexplainable events? Because conspiracy theories are the only ones that can explain some things going on in this country and in the world that apparently defy any logical explanation. The most recent example is the US government’s unexplainable behavior dealing with the Ebola threat, but this type of government behavior has become more the norm than the exception.
So, what is a conspiracy theory? A conspiracy theory is actually a logical explanation to the result of a clandestine operation, secret plot or illegal event whose official explanation exhibits some evident attempts to obfuscate, mislead or disinform.[5]
Typical examples of elements that indicate the presence of a conspiracy are the presence of unusual, difficult to explain alleged facts such as the discovery of an almost intact bullet on President Kennedy’s stretcher, or the intact passport of one of the alleged hijackers in the rubble of the pulverized WTC towers, or the fact that none of the planes’ black boxes were found.
Another example is the formulation of contradictory statements by key players, particularly the ones who were supposed to protect us from such event. Typical of these are Condi Rice and other high-level members of the Bush II administration claiming that the idea of crashing planes against buildings never crossed their minds.In the same fashion, the fact that WTC Building 7, a skyscraper with a steel structure that was not hit by any plane, collapsed on its own footprint several hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers is not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Investigation Report and has been ignored by the US mainstream media and by most authors who have studied the event.
In a recent article for the Weekly Standard Jonathan Last wrote: “We have arrived at a moment with our elite institutions where it is impossible to distinguish incompetence from willful misdirection.”[6] Contrary to Mr. Last’s assertion, rather than impossible, it is very simple: It is willful misdirection, cunning, lying and sheer treason, and some people have been saying it for many years. Unfortunately, however, most brainwashed Americans of both the Left and the Right have been calling these people “conspiracy theorists.”
Notes:
1. This explains why the investigation about the Benghazi events has virtually stopped. An investigation of Benghazi may open the door for a new investigation of 9/11, and none of the two factions of the Repucratic Party want to risk that.
2. In an address to the nation on November 10, 2001, President George W. Bush clearly expressed the ban when he threatened, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th.”
3. In Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, William Blum mentions how the media will make anything that smacks of “conspiracy theory” an immediate “object of ridicule.” This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class — for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls “the media’s most effective tool — silence.” But in case somebody’s asking questions, all you have to do is say, “conspiracy theory,” and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention]
4. Forrestal quoted in Medford Evans, The Assassination of Joe McCarthy (Boston: Western Islands, 1970), p. 113.
5. Conspiracies are so real that the CIA has developed an extensive vocabulary to euphemistically refer to them: “covert actions,” “black operations,” “deep operations,” “secret actions,” “blackbook operations,” etc.
6. Jonathan Last, “Six Reasons to Panic,” the Weekly Standard, Vol. 20, No. 07, October 7, 2014.