In 2015 the Germanwings flight was shot down by a US government laser: the top-secret program called the High-Energy Liquid Laser Air Defense System intended to shoot down an intercontinental missile launched as a target, but missed and hit the passenger plane. There is also no doubt that MI6 – the British intelligence service – orchestrated the plot to assassinate Princess Diana, as she represented a threat to the future of the British Royal House.
In our country there is no shortage of those who continue to believe that the terrible 11-M attacks were organized by an incredible conspiracy that brought together the Spanish and Moroccan intelligence services, left-wing powers, the ETA and the jihadists. Everything to kick the PP out of power. As if that were not enough, who is not convinced that the investigation of the Alcasser crime was, in fact, a screen to hide the real culprits, powerful people and those related to the underworld of snuff films, in the style of the well-known film of Amenábar Thesis?
The hand that rules the world
Who pulls the strings of national and world politics? Mysterious organizations that are not very secret (because if not, we would not know about their existence), such as Skull & Bones, located at Yale University, or the famous Bilderberg Group, which has brought together the most powerful women and men on the planet every year since 1954. All of them conspire to decide the future of the world for their own benefit. Or it can be governments trying to take control of a country, as in the excellent 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate , directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra. This political thriller tells how the son of a prominent conservative family in the United States is captured along with his platoon during the Korean War. During his captivity he is subjected to brainwashing to turn him into a key piece to place a puppet of the communist bloc in the presidency of the country. In 2004 Jonathan Demne, the director of The Silence of the Lambs , directed a remake, starring Denzel Washington, perfectly obviable.
Of course, for secret societies we cannot forget the most fantastic of all and mother of all: the Illuminati, which has been directing the destinies of the West for centuries. They are the protagonists of the mediocre novel by Dan Brown Angels and Demons turned into a movie also mediocre by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. The Illuminati are the usual resource of Hollywood when they want to put a secret society in the script, as in the terrible Tom Raider.
The Quintessential Conspiracy: The Kennedy Assassination
But there is no doubt that the most complex and elaborate conspiracy theory is that related to the Kennedy assassination. The only easy thing to understand is why it came about: many find it impossible to accept that a single man with a rifle could so upset the political order of the most powerful country in the world. Proof that it is impossible for many to accept this simple fact is found in Oliver Stone’s well-known JFK , starring Kevin Costner. A film that earned the nickname “Dancing with the facts.” Based on the book published by prosecutor Jim Garrison, the first major Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist, it perfectly illustrates one of the basic characteristics of any conspiracy theory: don’t let objective data spoil it. Thus, an assistant to Jim Garrison said that his boss “first built his theory and then fitted the data to it. And if they didn’t match, he said they had been altered by the CIA.”
It is very important to differentiate between conspiracy and conspiracy theory . The first is an actual plot and is usually local in scope, while the second is perception . Conspiracy theories, especially global ones, are built over time, adding new data and new developments, while offering conspiracy explanations to data that do not fit the plot. All of them are characterized by three distinctive elements that are clearly shown in the X-Files series: a powerful, evil and clandestine group (in this case certain groups from the intelligence services), the agents that extend their influence to all conceivable levels that are the men in black, and a group of brave and misunderstood trying to unmask them, our lovable Mulder and Scully.
What makes us conspiracy theorists?
It is not very clear except that a conspiracy theorist is not born, he is made; little by little it becomes theory until you see life through it: it is what is called the hidden hand mentality . Everything usually starts with a belief in some conspiracy theory and ends with a view of history that relies heavily on plots.
On the other hand, the conspiracy theorist is compulsive and self-taught , devoting hours and hours in which he learns every single element of his conspiracy down to the smallest detail; In addition, he does not usually change his mind about his strongest beliefs and always finds evidence that his belief has overtones of reality. Now, being conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean becoming paranoid , like Mel Gibson’s character in Richard Donner’s Conspiracy , but it can happen. One of the great British conspiracy theorists of the 19th century, Nesta Webster, ideologue of the Jewish-Masonic plots and the Illuminati, was so obsessed that when they rang the bell of the street door she would not answer unless she was with a gun in her hand. Chinese leader Mao was another paranoid about conspiracies : as an old man he refused medical treatment because he thought his enemies would use that method to kill him. Mao saw conspiracies everywhere: he even refused to swim in his private pool because he believed the water had been poisoned.
References:
Prooijen, JW (2018) Psychology of Conspiracy Theories, Routledge
Brotherton, R. (2017) Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, Bloomsbury Sigma
