I’m allergic to conspiracy theories. They set my teeth on edge and unleash a surge of anger at the nutters trying to mess with my head and untether my grip on rational thinking. Naturally, on rare occasions, this means I get it wrong as the paranoid ones turn out to be right.We live in an increasingly mad world with truth, facts, sanity under assault from every direction. There’s a US president who lies as he breathes, one charitably assumes because of some personality disorder, which, as luck (his) had it, has turned into a tried and trusted technique for fending off criticism for dodgy dealings.
A Russian president who uses dezinformatsiya, an old Stalinist trick honed by the KGB Black Propaganda unit, as a political and power weapon to undermine opponents, spread chaos and bolster his leadership credentials at home. Plus the US militia bunch who are so anti-government, they see the devil incarnate residing in DC. Not to mention the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ fantasists who so dislike one side, they blithely overlook glaring faults in the other.
Conspiracy theorists exist in a fear-filled world of treachery where one authority is the malign Other, always manipulating, bending the truth to suit their ends, never to be believed. What distinguishes most of this ilk is their toxic rage that obliterates all good in the hated other and equally ignores all bad in those on their side of the fence. They’d eat their own entrails before admitting that (take your pick), 9/11, mass shootings, chemical weapon attacks, moon landings were exactly what they seemed to be. Not that one shouldn’t keep an open mind, since politicians never mind intelligence services since time immemorial have obfuscated and covered up. I’ve always been reasonably good at cherry-picking nuggets of certainty whatever the source – idiots sometimes stumble on a great truth and heroes do have feet of clay. But it is increasingly hard-going establishing what is knock-on-wood irrefutable fact in the face of a blizzard of misinformation.
All of the above being the macrocosmic problem which is mirrored in miniature in enmeshed families. All families have a mindset, an accepted outlook, brainwash to a degree if you will. At the extreme end of the spectrum, one paranoid parent’s take on ‘reality’ is forcibly imposed on the others, as a bulwark against a threatening outside world. Cults operate in the same way. No individual within the system is allowed to think their own thoughts, test out their reality against the distortions they are being force-fed. If they do, they are harassed, excluded or even killed.
Working with abuse survivors makes it obvious how destructive denying reality can be, never mind any additional emotional and physical damage suffered. "If I apologize, my father will let me back in. We will be one big, unhappy family again. I might lose my mind, but I won't lose my parents. It's a short trip to the edge of the cliff." Linda Katherine Cutting: Memory Slips. Gas-lighting in abusive marriages serves the same function of persuading the battered spouse to doubt what they know to be true of their psychologically damaged partner.
What separates humans from animals is consciousness, the ability to think beyond biological necessities of survival, food, procreation. Attacking our thinking processes dehumanises, sabotages sanity and is an attempt to turn us into malleable robots. The conspiracy theorists may see themselves as brave warriors but most of the time they are as guilty of corrupting truth as the ones they fight against. As the outsider to this game, I’d be very grateful if both would sort themselves out and a) get real and b) get honest; and if that proves impossible, find a good shrink to disentangle their fiction from fact.
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