A new poll is being circulated by Canadian media outlets under the banner ‘Conspiracy theories are popular in Canada, especially among conservatives’.
The premise is that a swath of the Canadian and American population is manifesting some sort of weird, undesirable, psychological phenomenon or something. We’re told the name of this phenomenon, it’s called ‘conspiracy theories’. But nowhere in the article is there any attempt to define what this means. Whatever it is, it’s clearly bad. Furthermore, we’re informed that ‘conservatives’ do this undefined bad thing more than people who presumably vote for Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden.
Instead of a definition, we’re provided with examples of the phenomenon. Basically, the article takes a handful of status quo, establishment narratives and assigns the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to not accepting them as unquestionable, absolute truth.
Extreme, fringe beliefs are included and treated as indistinguishable from dissenting opinion on serious, mainstream issues. The inference is that things like doubting the trustworthiness of mainstream media and questioning the safety of COVID ‘vaccines’ is no different to believing the Earth is flat.
It’s all to be understood as the same ‘crazy’, undesirable form of thinking.
If I were the cynical type, I would be tempted to view this poll and the simultaneous distribution of the article across multiple media outlets to be flagrant propaganda.
The messaging is shamelessly blatant: Questioning official narratives is bad! You’re not a ‘flat earther’ are you? You know… like the idiots who vote for Conservatives!
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are susceptible to this kind of messaging.
They have been conditioned to equate the term ‘conspiracy theory’ with perspectives that are so self-evidently ludicrous you would have to be a moron to even entertain them.
On a superficial level it appears to be about the validity of certain perspectives. But those perspectives are never examined. Holding them is simply equated with stupidity.
In other words, it’s not about the validity of the ideas. It’s about categorizing people.
Everyone understands this on some level. They may tell themselves it’s about intellectual discernment. But the true, underlying appeal is pure, dumb ego inflation.
There is no intellectual discernment happening at all. Quite the opposite. It is merely categorization of right think vs wrong think, the enlightened vs the inferior class, the cool kids vs the losers, and identifying with the side that is most flattering to your self-conception.
It’s like the term ‘heretic’ in fundamentalist religion. The word isn’t wielded against non-believers to inspire the faithful to ponder: “Could people who think differently to us possibly be onto something?”
It’s used to categorize anyone who thinks outside the boundaries of official dogma as contemptibly wicked.
The intent is always the same: disincentivize intellectual curiosity. The people who benefit from the status quo are always the ones discouraging nonconformist thinking.
This intent is blatant in a mainstream media article that encourages readers to equate believing the Earth is flat with believing “mainstream media is manipulating the information it disseminates”.