Conspiracy Theory Crap from a Cabal of Charlatans

Including conspiracy theories squared

A favorite propaganda technique these days is to stifle debate by labelling any opposing argument as a “conspiracy theory.” It is a pejorative akin to comparing someone to members of the flat earth society or to holocaust deniers. It is intended to tar the target simply as a nutcase who is guilty of believing or advocating something that everyone knows is untrue. Why should you believe anything from such a lunatic?

But some of these attacks are actually (CT)² — ‘conspiracy theories squared.’ That is, a conspiracy that itself falsely stigmatizes any opposing views as unfounded conspiracy theories.

There are a number of fundamental flaws that often mark this type of argument. One is that the propagandists just label any view contrary to their accepted wisdom as a “conspiracy theory” thereby summarily dismissing the “deplorables” who hold dissenting views. In the words of the Wall Street Journal, such nonconforming views are nothing more than deranged rantings of “conspiracy raconteurs,” who “live in a world of storytelling, not evidence.”

Below I will highlight some recent examples of this technique that vividly illustrate how illegitimate and deceptive the “conspiracy theory” label often is. These examples all are of alleged conspiracy theories that have proven to be factually correct, not just unsupported theories. But even though some theories may prove to be unfounded, many never should have been mischaracterized as “conspiracy theories” to begin with.

Before discussing those examples it is useful, even essential, to recognize just what “conspiracy theory” means.

What is a conspiracy theorist?

PLEASE, don’t stop reading and leave me now just because I’m about to give you some definitions. You may think that’s a bit dry but bear with me — They are important but are ignored by the Trump-hating proselytizers in the Democratic firmament including the ancien régime media.

Let’s start with “conspiracy.”

Those who are going to talk about “conspiracy theories,” should be required to be clear about just what a ‘conspiracy’ is.

Although the legal definition of “conspiracy” can vary slightly between different jurisdictions, there are key elements that apply generally. At common law a conspiracy is “an agreement between two or more persons to commit an unlawful act or to accomplish a lawful end by unlawful means.”

In the civil context, the “end” or the “means” used to accomplish that end is not limited to those that are “unlawful,” but may be include “something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible.”

And let’s not forget theories.

And while we’re on definitions, keep in mind that a theory is exactly that — a theory. It is a fact or opinion that may not yet be proven, but which may be either valid or invalid. In the scientific realm Nicholas Copernicus’ heliocentric theory comes to mind. His theory that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice-versa, was first regarded as heretical but has long since been proven to be correct. Copernicus’ book explaining his theory was banned. Those who advocated it were denounced as heretics. The victims included a Giordano Bruno, who was a 16th-century Italian philosopher, mathematician, and poet, who was burned at the stake for believing in the “heretical” heliocentric theory

Today there are many theories, arguments, and political positions branded as conspiracy theories that are treated as parallels to medieval heresies. Their proponents may be debanked, ostracized, shunned by their families, fired, denied employment, or in extreme cases assaulted or even killed. But like medieval theories of astronomy, today’s theories about such political matters, whether they involve climate change, presidential mental infirmities, or stealing elections, may be valid and correct or they may be invalid and incorrect.

Thus, investigation and further development of facts may be required before you can comfortably say that one of these theories has been proven. But do not fall into the trap of discounting them just because someone slaps a label on them as “conspiracy theories” held only by “conspiracy raconteurs.”

What’s wrong with conspiracy theories?

Dana Milbank tells us on NPR:

At this point, the Republican Party and Fox News and the entire right sort of own the conspiracy theory space. It has become mainstream. . . .

So you had wild, ludicrous conspiracy notions being offered from the bully pulpit, from the very highest level of government. So in a way, we're all living in this conspiracy universe right now.

What a maroon.

By and large, those like Milbank who smear their adversaries as “conspiracy theorists” are just trying to avoid addressing the merits of an opposing position or argument by labelling their adversaries as nutcases. In that same NPR interview, Milbank and his NPR interlocutor, Terry Gross smeared now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Starr had been appointed to lead the impeachment investigation of Bill Clinton. That included investigating the death of Clinton’s associate attorney general, Vince Foster. After their investigation, they concluded that Foster’s death was a suicide not a murder. Despite their conclusion, NPR and Milbank castigated Starr and Kavanaugh for investigating Foster’s death.

See how that works? Don’t even bother to investigate allegations, even possible crimes, that Milbank or NPR think are beyond the pale. Accept our view of it, they argue. Don’t even try to investigate. You will just feed the big lie.

It is difficult to pass up one more example of single-minded devotion to the “conspiracy theory” meme. Brian Stelter of CNN uses it for everything. Here he is with an “analysis” ostensibly about the Jeffrey Epstein mess, titled “MAGA media’s conspiracy theories put Trump in power — and now they’re coming back to bite him.” You see already from just that title that Trump won the election because of “conspiracy theories.” The voters’ concerns, including the unchecked invasion across our border, the economy, the dismal performance of the incumbent, and the cackling incoherence of the replacement candidate had nothing to do with it. Just the “conspiracy theories.”

The conspiracy-soaked culture that propelled President Donald Trump to political power is now coming for him. . . .

The online outrage highlights a vulnerability for Trump and an unfortunate reality about the incentive structure of this social media era. In short, it’s that conspiracy theories keep people watching, sharing and playing along, even about a topic as lurid as sex trafficking. . . .

The never-ending conspiracy

The professed details vary from influencer from influencer, but the general idea is always that a cabal of liberal elites are both evil and beyond the reach of any accountability.

Good God. It is difficult to find a wider ranging application of the “conspiracy theory” meme to anyone who disagrees with the intelligentsia about anything. Everything that Stelter disagrees with, everything that helps Donald Trump, is a conspiracy.

Now let’s look at some other noteworthy examples of the use of the “conspiracy theory” meme as an illegitimate tool used to discredit opposing arguments.

The COVID-19 lab leak theory

When we were first hit with the Chinese virus that came to be known as COVID-19, anyone who suggested that it was man-made and originated in a Fauci-supported lab in China was widely tarred as a heretic or worse. They were widely denounced as “conspiracy theorists” whose theories had been “debunked,” i.e., not yet proven. Of course they were not yet proven. That is why they are called “theories.”

Like a modern-day Inquisition, Fauci and other government actors treated medical professionals and any other dissenters like medieval heretics: Silence their voices and destroy their livelihoods and lives. Put them in prison if you can.

Even so-called “scientists” joined in the attacks. For example, in April 2020, The Alliance for Science published COVID: Top 10 Current Conspiracy Theories. It included the lab-leak theory as its #3 of its Top 10:

[T]he sheer coincidence of China’s lead institute studying bat coronaviruses being in the same city as the origin of the COVID outbreak has proven too juicy for conspiracists to resist. The idea was seeded originally via a slick hour-long documentary produced by the Epoch Times, an English-language news outlet based in the United States with links to the Falun Gong religious cult that has long been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). . . . . This theory can be easily debunked now that there is unambiguous scientific evidence — thanks to genetic sequencing — that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has entirely natural origins as a zoonotic virus originating in bats.

The Alliance for Science had plenty of company. In March 2020, The Lancet, a sometimes-respectible medical journal published an “open letter” originally signed by twenty-seven “public health scientists” from the U.S. and seven other countries and later was endorsed by more than 2000 co-signers. These supposedly distinguished notables smeared as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who contended that the source of the Covid-19 virus was a Chinese lab leak, not bats in a cave.

The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. . . . Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.

To put a fine, scientific point on it, “What a crock of crap from a conclave of charlatans.”

First, the belief that the COVID-19 virus was man-made and originated in a lab in China is not a conspiracy. It is a belief that was held by millions. That it is a widely held view does not convert it into a conspiracy. And believing that it spread via a lab did not involve necessarily anything “criminal, illegal, or reprehensible.” The “conspiracy” label was simply a deceptive tactic to make it sound nefarious and illegitimate.

It is now widely accepted that the source of the COVID-19 pandemic was indeed a laboratory in China, not bats in a cave. Today it is more accurate to label the “lab leak” contention as an established fact, than as a “conspiracy theory.”

Thus, by their own “logic” it is now fair to condemn the original 27 plus the 2000+ “me toos” as “conspiracy theorists.” But they are conspiracy theorists² because they acted in concert to falsely label those who disagreed with them as “conspiracy theorists.” (CT)²: QED.

Was he sharp as a tack? Or did Biden lack mental capacity?

Here is an outlandish conspiracy theory for you:

MAGA Media has portrayed Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government. That might sound like an exaggeration to those who don’t tune in to Fox News or listen to talk radio, but it has been a real and constant theme in the right-wing media universe.

That was CNN’s take two days before the presidential debate in an article titled “Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.”

CNN’s theory was that the “MAGA media” had gone too far in portraying Biden as mentally challenged and that at the debate he was going to knock the ball out of the park.

While the two will undoubtedly tangle over a host of issues, the stage also will afford Biden a unique opportunity to puncture the narrative he lacks the mental fitness to be commander-in-chief.

Realizing that the debate was about to expose their overblown conspiracy theory, CNN knew that Orange Hitler’s allies were getting desperate:

The hang-up, however, for MAGA Media is that they’ve forced themselves into a corner. Now, they’re trying to find a way to break free — and they’re getting desperate.

Only a desperate lunatic would push such a fanciful conspiracy theory, right? Well, maybe not. Two days after CNN wrote that, the entire world saw that Biden was indeed a “mentally incapacitated elderly man” who was incapable of running the federal government. Even CNN’s Jake Tapper, who was a debate moderator, has now confessed that CNN blew this one big time. Another one bites the dust.

Cozy with China? Bah, humbug. Just another conspiracy theory.

In “Biden campaign adviser dismisses Trump attack ads on Hunter as a tired conspiracy theory” (08/20/2020) Politico quoted senior Biden campaign adviser Symone Sanders’ comment on “the President’s latest ad blitz.” Sanders claimed that the ads were “a conspiracy theory cooked up by Rudy Giuliani.” And what was the conspiracy theory that those ads pitched? Politico said they “portray[ed] the former vice president as overly cozy with China and his son as a corrupt profiteer.”

Biden, of course, confirmed the Politico/Sanders lie about the so-called “conspiracy theory” scenario in the 2020 presidential debate when he indignantly denied that Hunter had received one red cent from the Chinese communists:

My son has not made money, in terms of this thing about, uh, what are you talking about …. CHINA! I have not had, the only guy who made money from China is this guy. The only one. Nobody else has made money from China.

That one has not aged well either. It has been well documented that Hunter received millions from the Chinese, including almost $5 million from 2013 - 2018 alone.

Hunter Biden’s laptop? Russian disinfo. And any disagreement is a conspiracy theory.

Let’s take a look at just one more example of how Dems attack what they label as “conspiracy theories” — the Hunter Biden laptop story. When the New York Post first published the story about Hunter’s laptop with its pornographic videos, incriminating emails, and a wealth of other evidence of Hunter’s involvement in drugs, prostitution, and corruption, the contention that the laptop and its contents were Hunter’s was widely denounced. It was a “manufactured scandal” and anyone who denied that it all was just Russian disinformation was dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.”

When the Post originally broke its story, CNN and Stelter immediately jumped in to promote the ‘unfounded conspiracy’ meme:

“This is a classic example of the right-wing media machine,” Stelter said. “Fox and Trump have this in common: They want you to stay mad and stay tuned.”

The story is a “manufactured scandal,” Stelter said.

The Gang of 51 intelligence charlatans conspired to mislead the American people by releasing their statement (at the behest of Anthony Blinken) promoting the notion that the data on the laptop was Russian disinformation. NPR refused even to cover the story. Its public editor claimed the story lacked credible evidence (because Rudy Guliani was a source) and said that NPR would not cover it extensively because it "did not meet the bar for solid reporting." NPR commentators jumped on board, suggesting that the story was in conspiracy theory territory due to its allegedly unverified claims and the timing of its release shortly before the election.

Like Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, the “conspiracy theory” that the laptop and its data were Hunter’s looks pretty darn solid today. It can now be safely described as established fact. Hunter finally acknowledged that the laptop and its data were not Russian disinformation when he sued Rudi Guliani and the owner of the computer repair shop for violating his privacy when they accessed and shared the laptop and its data with law enforcement.

When the Gang of 51 published their fraudulent screed and when Joe Biden wielded it as a sword in the last 2020 presidential debate just days later, the FBI had been in possession of the laptop for many months and knew that was not Russian disinformation. But although the FBI knew the emails and other data were verified, it observed the code of omerta to protect the Biden family and to sway the election.

With the truth now out, those who attempted to mislead us about it, most famously the Gang of 51, are the ones whose reputations have been left in shreds. Some have admitted that they did so because they didn’t want Trump to win and wanted to influence the election. That was the conspiracy, and it was carried out by bad people who labelled their political opponents who refused to swallow the Russian disinformation story, as conspiracy theorists.

They were indeed engaged in conspiracy theory² who were using that technique to sway an election.

A Grand Conspiracy? Stay tuned for more.

In this article I have attempted to analyze how the label of “conspiracy theory” has been broadly misused to falsely denigrate opposing adversaries and their views. As I have demonstrated above, many of these “theories” are valid and dangerous to our self-styled “elites” who denigrate them. That is why they seek to suppress them. As I write this, more evidence is being gathered to support the biggest and most poisonous conspiracy of them all, which, for the time being I will call “The Grand Conspiracy.” Some will reflexively dismiss it as a “conspiracy theory” that is nothing more than rantings from what the Wall Street Journal calls a “conspiracy raconteur.” Others may believe it already, while some have an open mind and think that a that a comprehensive investigation is necessary before a firm conclusion can be drawn.

I fall into the latter category, so The Grand Conspiracy is still a theory in my mind. But there already is evidence that supports it. If more evidence is developed, it may progress from theory to fact. We shall see.

Please stay tuned and subscribe if you are interested in more on the Grand Conspiracy theory (and other topics of interest).