Behind the ostensible government sits an enthroned invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people



Who said that? Some truther writing about 9/11? No, it was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.



This book is not about whether Obama is really a Muslim or if 9/11 was an inside job, it’s about why people appear to have so much time for such ridiculous guff. Mr Brotherton wishes to inform us that the conspiratorial is not tinfoil-hat stuff but is a profound part of th

Behind the ostensible government sits an enthroned invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people



Who said that? Some truther writing about 9/11? No, it was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.



This book is not about whether Obama is really a Muslim or if 9/11 was an inside job, it’s about why people appear to have so much time for such ridiculous guff. Mr Brotherton wishes to inform us that the conspiratorial is not tinfoil-hat stuff but is a profound part of the basic thinking patterns of human beings. Conspiracy theories are still loony, but the thinking behind them is universal, entirely ordinary, and unsurprising. As RB says



We’re all conspiracy theorists, at least some of the time



It’s interesting to note that if you buy one theory you’ll likely agree with them all. If you don’t believe the moon landings were faked you won’t believe 9/11 was done by the Bush regime. If you do believe that alien remains are being hidden in Area 51 you will probably think vaccines are unsafe. If you think climate change is a hoax you’re more likely to think that “Princess Diana got whacked by the British royal family”, in Mr Brotherton’s inelegant phrase.



So, the conspiracists think in general that



There are two worlds : one real and (mostly) unseen, the other a sinister illusion meant to cover up the truth



They therefore have an immediate a problem – if this conspiracy is so far-reaching and powerful, how come they don’t shut down YOU, the truther? Well, they have an answer. Some truthers think that other truthers are part of the conspiracy because they say such ridiculous things they must be plants put there to discredit the truther movement! This is not a new thought :



Astrophysicist and UFOlogist Jacques Vallee argues that many claims of UFO sightings and alien abductions are part of an elaborate disinformation campaign designed to undermine the credibility of serious UFO scholars …. Intimidating, paying off, murdering or otherwise shutting up every conspiracy theorist who stumbles on the incredible truth would presumably be fairly labour-intensive, the logic goes. It would be easier to discredit conspiracy movements from within, by spreading ever more convoluted, implausible, absurd theories, thereby manufacturing an atmosphere in which conspiracy theorists are invariably seen as unhinged whack-jobs



(If this is true it has certainly worked on me)



The truthers bravely and boldly say some truly repulsive things. In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing professional theorist Alex Jones tweeted



Our hearts go out to those that are hurt or killed…but this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag



The Sandy Hook massacre was likewise seen as a “false flag” operation.



All these horrific events , they say, are part of the same singular plot : a ruse staged by government operatives intent on taking away Second Amendment rights to bear arms.



So the idea is that the current American government will engineer the murder of 20 children in order to get the power to make gun owning illegal, or some such rubbish. I am stunned that any same person could think like that.



Talking of bizarre things some people can argue themselves into thinking :



TIMOTHY MCVEIGH (A CONSPIRACY THEORIST IF EVER THERE WAS ONE) EXPLAINS HOW JIHADIS THINK



An accomplice explained how McVeigh had rationalised killing secretaries and receptionists and other government employees who had nothing to do with debacles like Waco. “He explained to me that he considered all those people to be as if they were the storm troopers in the movie Star Wars. They may be individually innocent, but because they are part of the Evil Empire they were guilty by association.”



Ugh.



Let us take a pace back and start again.



Believing that someone somewhere is in control is preferable to thinking that the course of life is dictated by nothing more than chance.



This must be why creationists hate evolution so much, and how atheism inspires horror in many people. If no one (no God) is in charge then this universe is just gonna crash! And burn! And it’s also a real lonesome thought – nobody cares about us humans, we’re on our own here, cosmic orphans. Believers would rather have a tyrannical God than that, like some people will stay in an abusive relationship rather than leave.



One thing which got on my nerves was Mr Brotherton’s continual citing of like a million dubious psychological experiments designed to show this or that aspect of the way we think, or should I say the way some first year American students think, since they seem to be the perpetual guinea pigs here. This parade of uninteresting non-information was a complete bore. But still, if you skip those bits, there is still lots of great information here – the revelation of the Umbrella Man in the Zapruder film, how it is that the buttons on NYC pedestrian crossings were all disabled years ago but still light up (the lights change automatically), how doors-close buttons on lifts likewise do not work, how if a president escapes the assassin (Reagan) people will accept the attempt was by one lone gunman, but if the president dies (Kennedy) then it will be seen as a conspiracy – this is the result of the fallacious (but common) thinking which demands big causes of big events (it offends us to think of the mousy schmuck Oswald being capable of killing John F Kennedy – him?? That guy?? No way.)



This book is pretty good at what it sets out to do, which is to contextualise the paranoid conspiratorial tendency of modern thought and, almost, to domesticate it. The theories themselves are, of course, entirely bonkers, but the join-the-dots thinking is something human brains do all the time, even when the dots are not really there. It’s a vital pattern-noticing meaning-enhancing activity which our brilliant minds perform without our conscious intending much of the time, a mental breathing in and breathing out. That’s not ironical, our minds are brilliant. (Also stupid, but brilliant.). We create scintillating science, profound poetry and crazed conspiracy theories. Like Neil Young said, it's all one song.