Do you also think that there is something dodgy about how Princess Diana died?

Are nodding your head up and down or shaking your head from side to side? I welcome you either way because as I am here to explain, no matter where you stand on Lady Di’s death, we are not much different from each other.

So how about 9/11 then? Do you think that there is a possibility that 9/11 was an inside job? Well if 9/11 did not make you question the integrity of governments, Pizzagate must have done the trick. Weren’t we all reading about and wondering whether top Democrats such as Hillary Clinton were behind a child sex ring? Of course, history has shown us that sometimes there really is a fire when there is smoke (i.e. Watergate scandal), but is there any truth to the government is putting some chemicals in the water that are turning people gay? Do you ever find yourself questioning whether Prince Charles is a vampire? Is it possible that Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a look-a-like and we are only one Beatle away from a world without any living member of the Beatles? Most importantly, does the Moon really exist or is it all a hoax?

From a purely academic point of view, there is technically no difference in entertaining all these possibilities… “Surely there must be a difference between considering whether the US government coordinated 9/11 attacks and believing that the whole Moon thing is a hoax” I hear you mumbling to yourself; “9/11 can be an inside job.” Again, academically speaking, it is equally valid to question the existence of the Moon and what really happened on September 11. Basically 9/11, the Moon and all the other events I have mentioned so far are considered as “conspiracy theories” and I, you, and everybody around us are susceptible to believing in them. In other words, we are all conspiracy theorists, but we choose different poisons. This is actually great news.

We are all conspiracy theorists

What is so great about being put in the same pot with some “nutshells” believing that Prince Charles is a vampire is basically “being put in the same pot with them”. More specifically, in a world where so much is divided between us versus others, we all need reminders that we are not much different from each other and this blog is such a reminder.

It is very easy to pathologize believers of conspiracy theories as “others”. If you are pro-vax you tend to see anti-vaxxers as “a bunch of crazy people who believe in nonsense” and it goes both ways. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to position belief in conspiracy theories simply as “beliefs in a different account of an event”. It is even more difficult to develop an understanding for those who believe something that we do not personally give credit to. With this blog I aim to explain why you are somebody else’s “crazy person who believes in nonsense” and why you are not so different from pro/anti-vaxxers (whichever side you are on).

So what is a conspiracy theory?

An obvious question to pose at this point would be asking “What is a conspiracy theory?” and a brief literature review on this topic would put forth that coming up with a coherent explanation of what a conspiracy theory is not an easy task. There is no standard definition and different scholars define conspiracy theories in various ways. Let’s just say that “a common essence” of all the different conspiracy theory definitions is that it involves a group of people with hidden agendas and their secret plots. Much like the British intelligence (a group of people) murdering Lady Diana and boyfriend Mr. Dodi Fayed and stating it as a car crash (secret plot) rather than risking the mother of a future king married to a Muslim (hidden agenda). Or NASA (a group of people) deleting evidence that the moon is not real but is actually an alien space station (secret plot) to monitor our planet (hidden agenda). Huh.