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BBC article on CTs

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  • 08-06-2011 1:39pm
    #1
    Monty Burnz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,455 ✭✭✭✭


    There's a new article about CTs on the Beeb which some folks here might find interesting.
    The politics of cabals has always been pretty muddled, says James McConnachie, co-author of the Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories. These groups allow protesters to project their own fears onto them. In the US, the most extreme fear over Bilderberg is of a hidden cabal run by the European Union and threatening American freedoms. In Europe, the view is often of a free market elite trying to push through a right-wing agenda.

    "Conspiracy theories are quite blind to conventional notions of left and right," says McConnachie. "The left is organising an international government. Meanwhile, global capitalism on the right may be doing the same thing by different means."

    For Aaronovitch what often triggers widespread cabal theories are moments of great upheaval. "It happens a lot when times are changing significantly. Whether, oddly, they are changing for better as well as for the worse. Why did McCarthyism happen at the time when US economy was growing faster than at any time in history?"
    Society was in flux, the economy expanding rapidly and millions of servicemen were coming back from the war.
    It's not just the about social context. Some people are more susceptible than others to believing in wacky cabals, says Prof Chris French, of Goldsmith College's psychology department. "It's people who tend to be alienated by the mainstream, who feel powerless. They have a need to have a sense of control."

    Not only do they not trust the government, they tend not to trust their neighbours either. And in the need for control, there may be links to the roots of religious belief, he says.
    I think the article makes a lot of good points, but one point that it doesn't really address is the fact that conspiracies do occur - albeit not necessarily on the scale of what we read about on this forum quite often. :)

    I guess the author would argue that it's only the type of 'world domination' CTs that this piece addresses, using the Bilderberg meeting as a jumping-off point. There's no point in arguing that smaller scale conspiracies don't exist in a post-Watergate etc. world.


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