Sunday, April 8, 2007

Commentary - When conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact

Are you a true believer of conspiracy theories? Are you a skeptic? Or are you like me, a friend of Bob who loves a little spice in their life? The world of conspiracy theory personalities is broken down into those three groups. The true believers provide the theories, the skeptics debunk the theories, both of those side battle and the friends of Bob float between the two depending on the wind, claims of both sides and mood.

What makes a person become a conspiracy theorist or follower of conspiracy theories is hard to define. I have noticed from my own experiences that in many cases what seems to spark a person down this road is an event or series of events that causes the person to question what is really going on in this world. Take legendary CT activist Mae Brussell for example. Her interest in the Warren Commission report was the key to her involvement in this sub-culture. The inconsistencies in the Warren Commission findings are many and one of the subjects I will be blogging about in the future. As if we need another Kennedy conspiracy theorist?

Mae was the first of the serious JFK researchers and her work is invaluable to this day and just as vital in a time of war on terror, war on the citizenry and Big Brother as it was in the 60's and 70's. Her work on government conspiracies was groundbreaking and of all the CT subjects it is the one area I feel most strongly about. It's easy to dismiss this field as being full of kooks, but it's impossible to deny that groups of individuals within our government are active in conspiring against the very people they represent and serve. All one has to do is look at the formation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP), it's manufactured intelligence, the events that transpired based on that false intelligence and you have conspiracy fact rather than theory.

The X-Factor of the OSP's bogus intelligence is "why" this was done. What agenda is advanced by manufacturing intelligence that will cause war to be waged? Is the motivation financial? Is the motivation expansion of power? Is the motivation xenophobia? Are all three of those things interconnected? This is where the typical theorist trips themselves. They postulate a motivation that is clouded with their own bias and leads them to conclusion that can be shot down for lack of proof.

Slowly the information is being uncovered and while we may never be able to piece together the true motivation behind the invasion of Iraq we are slowly seeing the apparatus that is used in a conspiracy. This is a real world example of how these things are created and how they are operated. Knowing this information can help us in future events and when we look back at events of the past.

2 comments:

Tell me lies Tell me sweet little lies said...

Whatever anyone wants to say about Mae's eventual conclusions not one person can and to my knowledge has been able to guestion her tenacity or or ability to chase down all the information and organize it like she did.
That elusive "They" really didn't expect anyone like her.
And if she wasn't on to anything why the need to investigate her in the first place??
Yes the world needs another Kennedy theorist.There are many questions that have not even been asked yet.
Personally I am a friend of Bob ..well Newhart but only in the original show not the later one.

The CT Blogger said...

Tenacity and her amazing organzational skills, yes, those are two wonderful descriptions of how she operated. I seem to remember reading an article some years ago that described her archives as being somewhat disorganized but I have a feeling she relied on her own system for filing and crossreferencing.

How she was able to weave together so many theories with such skill and clarity is still amazing to me.