Skeptic Project

By Muertos

This blog continues my examination of Desteni, a cult that uses, among other things, conspiracy theories as a tool to attract and recruit new members. Desteni is a mostly Internet-based cult, and they have never been shy about taking on those who criticize them. Recently, however, Desteni's tactics have changed. They are now engaging in a ritual that they call "Anti-Hate Responses." Destonians characterize any criticism of their group or their ideology as "hate speech," so the very term "Anti-Hate Responses" is carefully constructed as a thought-terminating device.

The "Anti-Hate" cycle works like this. A video on YouTube critical of the cult is selected as the target. Members then make videos responding to, and trashing, the target video and posting the links on a topic on the Desteni web forums. (I might add that the Desteni forums were recently made almost exclusively members-only, after an embarrassing incident where their forum was hit by a porn spammer. However, there is still one part of the forum, "Introduction to Desteni," that is still public. The "Anti-Hate Responses" topics are posted in this publicly-viewable forum. What goes on behind this public forum is no longer visible to non-Desteni-affiliated Internet users).

What's interesting about the "Anti-Hate Response" ritual is what's missing from it. Due to the clampdown on Desteni's web forum, the manner in which the target videos are selected--and by whom--is kept carefully out of sight. We know nothing about who is choosing these videos, why, and how the selections are communicated to Destonians. In fact, the forum topics laying out the responses rarely link the target video directly, and none are posted on YouTube as video responses directly to the target. To me this suggests the "Anti-Hate Response" procedure has some sort of top-down coordination. If the "Anti-Hate Response" phenomenon was spontaneous and user-initiated, most likely you'd see these responses popping up all over the place and being done in all sorts of different ways. That's not the case. Indeed just by browsing the "Anti-Hate Response" section of the Desteni public forum, one gets the sense of a well-coordinated effort directed at churning out angry responses to critics in eerie lockstep with each other, which is the only way Destonians ever do anything.

Let's look briefly at a case study. One video that was selected as a target was created by a YouTube user called "TonyAteJesus" and was posted as a video response to one of the many videos in which Desteni spokesperson Sunette Spies pretends to channel various spirits through an "Interdimensional Portal." I picked this particular subject because the video TonyAteJesus was responding to is part of the conspiracist mythology of Desteni--it purportedly deals with the "Annunaki," which Destenians believe were reptilian extraterrestrials who exerted a large impact on humanity in ancient times. Actually the Annunaki were gods believed in by the ancient Sumerians, but the identification of Annunaki as reptilian aliens in Desteni mythology intentionally dovetails with the widely-known views of British conspiracy theorist David Icke who maintains that the world is still secretly run by reptilian aliens ("reptoids") who shape-shift into human form. It appears that many Destenians believe in the conspiracy theories of David Icke, or similar variants of these theories. Desteni cult leader Bernard Poolman obviously does, as he has warned Desteni members about "reptilian sleeper cells."

In any event, in his video TonyAteJesus posits, quite reasonably, that Desteni's interpretation of Sumerian mythology is completely false, and states that intellectuals who are knowledgeable about this subject would find Desteni's take on it to be ridiculous. He also states that Ms. Spies is acting and there's no such thing as an "interdimensional portal." Interestingly, this video was posted almost three years ago and is the only video this user has ever made.

You can see three representative responses to this video. One user takes a philosophical approach, speaking about the "key to truly understand us." Another Destonian goes after TonyAteJesus with both barrels blazing, flinging insults not only at him but at intellectuals in general, insisting that historical knowledge of Sumerian mythology is totally irrelevant. Another cult member obliquely reinforces the reptilian conspiracy theory by stating, "You are clinging to your constructed identity," playing into the old conspiracy theorist trope that what we know to be reality is a false construct created by conspiratorial powers. She even employs two age-old catch phrases of conspiracy theorists, that being "why haven't you proposed a solution?" (meaning a solution to all the world's problems), and the ubiquitous "Wake up!"

All three responses, and the others I sampled, make the same claim that the creator of the target video doesn't really understand Desteni and hasn't researched it well enough. This is a very common tactic used against Desteni critics and one that appears in almost every "Anti-Hate Response" I watched in one form or another. The argument is silly because this cult has literally thousands of hours of YouTube videos out there, which altogether spin a dense web of often self-contradictory material. A person could spend a lifetime watching nothing but Desteni videos. If one chooses not to do that, he or she is vulnerable to attack by the cult for "not having researched it well enough."

After sampling a broad range of "Anti-Hate Responses," I believe that these videos are not really aimed at Desteni's critics. Nor do I believe they are intended to sway fence-sitters or potential recruits to discredit voices warning them against getting involved with the cult. Instead, I suspect that at least one motivation behind the "Anti-Hate Response" ritual is to shore up Desteni members' own beliefs about the cult, to reinforce the "us vs. them" mentality that Desteni is the only proper way to think and act, and to serve as a vehicle by which Desteni members can demonstrate, to themselves and each other, how devoted they really are to the group and its ideology.

In this sense the "Anti-Hate Responses" are a form of group-think, as well as a means of control by the Desteni higher-ups. We already know that Desteni encourages its members to confess publicly on the Internet everything they've ever done wrong in their lives, in the guise of "self-forgiveness." Encouraging "Anti-Hate Responses" is merely another way for the cult to ensure that its members do what is expected of them. When prompted by a target video, they dutifully take to YouTube to sing the cult's praises and trash its critics, thus demonstrating how well they've absorbed and internalized the teachings of the group, and how willing they are to let the world see it. That it does double duty as damage control and broadsides against the critics is merely a fringe benefit.

The more I investigate Desteni, the more astounded I am at the tremendous sway that this group and its leaders have over the members. Each aspect of the cult's public persona, from the "Desteni I Process" financial scam to the skillful deployment of footsoldiers on YouTube to crush dissent against the group, seems to be carefully engineered to reinforce the cult's authoritative and xenophobic structure. The "Anti-Hate Responses" are merely another facet of this same tendency, and one that seems particularly disingenuous. It's not really about the critics at all. It's about how far Destenonians will go to to appease their leaders.

Thanks for reading.

By Clock
Skeptic Project is a debunking website, and one of the more popular ones I may add. It really is a website that is on the same level as the JREF forums, Screw Loose Change, and Debunking 9/11. We are known mainly for debunking Zeitgeist or the Bohemian Grove. Once in awhile, like other debunking websites, we make it onto the conspiracy circuit, and that circuit seems to be the Prison Planet Forums, by calling Skeptic Project a "Cointelpro source."

Now this is obviously a play on the bottom of the website's title: "Your #1 COINTELPRO cognitive infiltration source." which is obviously a joke.
The thing is, Theorists do not like debunking sites because it disagrees with their opinion on 9/11, for example. (There are also other reasons, such as debunkers making fun of them for their beliefs, but that's another story for another time) which is why they often tend to call us disinformation agents. (If you do not know, Disinfo agents are supposed workers for the government who are stopping conspiracy theorists from exposing the "truth" on such event, like 9/11, for example)

A fellow colleague of mine on this website, known as The Burger King posted an article entitled 'COINTELPRO! COINTELPRO! COINTELPRO!' This forum post depicts what the Prison planet frequenters had to say about our website, but more specifically about the Alex Jones articles that were written by Edward L. Winston which debunk 3 of his most popular movies. In this prison planet forum post contained many replies by conspiracy theorists, calling all debunkers Brainwashers, government lovers, ignorant, and even insane, despite that fact that everything we say contains many, many sources.

Most of the things that they've said about us have been adressed in this excellent article by Muertos that can be found here.

What interested me the most about this forum post was about that reply sent in by "infowarrior_039". The idea of this blog is that I will respond to his comment in order to clear any misconceptions. The green is "Infowarrior_039" and the black text is me.

Yes, it is too bad people can attack this information and the information about the New World Order as best as we can know. It is a very complex system of power, politics, banking, secret societies and control.

The first line already determines a flaw in the whole New World Order conspiracy theory. As explained into lengths in this article on Thrive Debunked, there is very little evidence to prove the existence of the NWO. Therefore, why believe in it? The thing about conspiracy believing is that you should never trust what the government says. Which means that whatever they will say is a lie.

Of course people like Alex Jones, Webster Tarpley, Gerald Celente and others are not right 100% of the time.

Yup, and far from it. (this, this) Do I need to say more?

Often they are not able to articulate the machine known as the New World Order accurately enough, in and in the aim of getting to the root of the issue, may on occasion make a seemingly erroneous statement, or one that is both correct and incorrect at the same time,

Alex jones has been talking about conspiracy theories since the mid-90's. How long has it taken him to talk accurately enough about the NWO? Yes, Alex Jones is right sometimes, but on alot of things, he tends to take insignificant and highly subjective occurrences as the proof of the nwo existing, or that America is going to become a huge police state. Look here for example.

A real researcher of the NWO knows that the New World Order is ALWAYS engaging in a continual battle for the minds and souls of humanity, including even their own highest ranking members.

That is a baseless argument, without any proof, but I suspect that this is talking about the so called "Illuminati" symbols in the media such as award shows or music videos. here is a video of rapper 2pac saying that he does not believe in the Illuminati and that it is not real. If an artist from the so called 'evil' music industry says that it is BS, can it exist? No! Of course, that would be assuming that 'they' were hiding themselves from him, despite the fact that they're have been other artists that have been considered to be 'tools' for the NWO in order to brainwash people. But again, how would 2pac not know this? Isn't it an 'insider' secret? Also, does a 'good' NWO researcher depicts going on websites like Natural News, who constantly predict that martial law is coming in america (here).

Another aspect where this skeptic attack has some merit is regarding some qoutes made by famous politicians and figures. Well it is possible that someone present took note of what people like David Rockefeller and the Rothschild and others have said in Bilderberg meetings, there does not seem to be a solid source for some of the qoutes that are attributed to him. Likewise, research on some other well known qoutes involving liberty and the revolution are very poorly sourced or are miss attributed or on occasion even misquoted.

I do agree with this here. Many quotes are used by CT's because they justify it as proof to the NWO, although most of the time they are fake or out of context. If you lookup the quote on google,the source of most of these are from conspiracy websites.

Well in my opinion none of these quotes are necessary in order to prove the activities of the New World Order, if they could be better sourced and verified then it would be of great help to wake others up. Indeed, many of these powerful quotes have woken countless numbers of people up including my self.

Wait, what? You've said before that there are lots of phony quotes, but then say that they are an excellent way to make people believe in the NWO by using quotes THAT DO NOT EXIST? If I would say a man can fly than show skeptics that the man is not flying but jumping, would that be a convincing reason to believe that the man is flying? (The term "waking up" means to believe in the nwo and know the "truth") I would say that that is very hypocritical on his part, to believe in these made up quotes, but I think the term Ironic fits better.

All having been said, we need to realize the well established military tactic of fog of war. Indeed the majority of things INFOWARS, Alex Jones and other truth seekers talk about is well sourced, well researched, and based from the most accurate source available.

No comment. I will just post this link up: http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/alex-jones/ (it proves how right Alex Jones has been)

The problem with skeptics and "debunkers" of truth seekers like Alex Jones and others is that no matter what, something we have said or done is wrong, or currently inaccurate based on the information that is publicly available, and therefore nothing we say has any value because we have "no idea what we are talking about". These skeptics hurl attacks on truth seekers, caught up in their quest to prove us all wrong, become exactly what they are accusing us of. Indeed expect for the very few mistakes or misunderstandings we may have made, they offer very little evidence or proof that they have a better idea, a better understanding or explanation, nor do we have any solid proof or evidence that backs our claims.

Infowarrior_039 makes no effort to prove if we were wrong on any of the Alex Jones topics. Also, if there information was correct, then we would not need to have to correct it, would we? The final statement is interesting. He says that he knows that conspiracy theorists have very little proof to back up their claim, which is again, ironic. (why believe in something with very little proof? [Religion is not the same thing])

IN the eyes of skeptics, their are no books, no documents, no whitepapers, no treaties, no declassified briefings, no evidence of any kind that proves a "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy". In fact in thier closed off minds, the word "conspiracy" does not exist. Even when hundreds and thousands of people around the world are criminally charged for "planning or committing an act of conspiracy" against various entities, their is no conspiracy.In the eyes of skeptics bound to prove everyone with an open mind wrong, they accept the full force of 1984 thought control and convince them selves that conspiracy simply does not exist. That power does not corrupt. That greed and control do not corrupt. They love denial, and thier is nothing we can do to prove them of anything. These skeptics would argue if you tried to tell them the sky was blue.

Can you show me a book, that proves the existence of the NWO? Of course, this taken entirely out of context, but it's another classic conspiracy theorist line: "You don't believe anything is wrong in the world! You just think everything is fine and dandy!
As usual with other conspiracy theorists, they love putting words in our mouths, because we disagree with them. They think that we 100% support awful 1984 type governments, which they love quoting so much.

If you really were about knowledge, truth and information, you would accept that almost everything we say is as accurate or as credible as we possibly can.

Quote from member emcada: In other words, you have zilch. We already understand this part.

Skeptics and debunkers out their, please know, we are in this together. Humanity is in this together. If you love being poisoned, fine. If you love dieing and death, fine. If you love being bankrupt, fine. If you love tyranny, fine. If you love your oppresses, fine. If you disown your own humanity and your own mental and spiritual power, fine. But if you really are ready to watch humanity disappear into insanity and extinction, go ahead. Just look at your children, parents, grandparents, and ancestors, and tell them you have given up on life. Tell them you have given up on humanity, that you have forsaked your own brain, your own gift of life on this marvelous planet. If you really think serving the full blown evil of the NWO is something you want to have on your name and your soul through eternity go ahead, just dont try and drag others into your hell hole, we are good people who care about our lives, our species, our home. We are trying to defend humanity while we are on our last legs. Thank you helping save humanity. You're doing a great job. Keep it up.

We are mean people because we disagree with them. These are the people that will keep on insisting that 9/11 was faked, and will use it as an attempt to push their anti-Semitic, paranoid and intolerant world view to you. These people don't really care that 3000 innocent men and women had died on that day, but do you really think they care about? No. They only care about their termite on the metal, WTC 7 being a "smoking gun", or proving that Bin Laden is innocent. These are the people that tell you that Global Warming is not real and that is a lie pushed by the government, despite the various articles that say otherwise, including that if the CO2 level goes above 2.0 by 2050, we will be screwed. But they only care about the 31'000 scientists sign a list that it is a fraud.This is ironic because he tells me that I am abandoning my unborn kids, my parents, and other family because I don't believe in something that will potentially screw us over as being able to live in this planet. I've given up on life because I don't believe in conspiracy theories. It must really suck living in the world that infowarrior_039 is living in, it seems awfully paranoid, and quite scary.
If you people want to have a discussion with us about the New World Order theory, that is fine, but don't ask us to prove that it is fake. There is already no evidence for the theory in the first place, so it is up to you to prove that it is real.

There was nothing really scientific about this article, but mainly to refute infowarriors_39's points.
Thank you for reading.

Discuss the article here!

Once in a while you read something that puts a complicated subject into such clear and perfect perspective that it instantly becomes, by virtue of its cogency, virtually the last word on the subject. I had that experience recently with a paper by Ryan Mackey, a former debunker from the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) forums, on the subject of 9/11 conspiracy theories. I'm devoting a blog post specifically to bring this article to the attention of my readers because I believe it's that important and it deserves to be highlighted.

Mackey has written a paper called The Great Internet Conspiracy: The Role of Technology and Social Media in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Currently the paper is available as a .PDF file here.It's 83 pages long, including footnotes and sources. This paper should be required reading, both for the misguided souls out there who are still unfortunate enough to believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories, but also--and even more importantly--for those of us who have devoted considerable time and effort to refuting and debunking these theories. Mackey's paper shines a very interesting light on us, our motivations, and our actions, and it does so in a way I have not seen before.

Why Did 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Take Off?

Mackey's main point in the paper is to analyze how and why 9/11 conspiracy theories rose and eventually fell in the public consciousness. His main thesis is that the short-lived popularity of conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks was largely due to a "perfect storm" of converging factors, chief among them the changing role of the Internet in peoples' social lives and identities.

Some of the main related points that Mackey makes are:

He argues that "9/11 Truth" peaked in 2006 and has been on a steady decline since then. He backs this up with observations on how popular Truther activism has been since 2006 (not much), how many people are still out there talking about 9/11 conspiracy theories (not many), and what the general public's view of "Truthers" is today (most people think they're nuts, or simply ignore them).
He argues that the brief surge in popularity of "9/11 Truth" is not an effect of the content of the conspiracy theory. He gets there by analyzing 9/11 conspiracy theories in the context of other conspiracy theories that have been popular over the past 30 years, such as the "Apollo moon hoax" or Columbine school massacre conspiracies.
He argues that what made "9/11 Truth" seem to have more importance than it did was the activist nature of some of its purveyors--such as Richard Gage, whose tactics of taking the conspiracy theory to the public differ greatly from previous pre-9/11 conspiracy theorists who are mostly content with talking about conspiracy theories in small insular groups that don't reach out to others.
This is a key point. Mackey says:

So that is it in a nutshell - there we have the secret ingredient that distinguished the 9/11 conspiracy theories from others. It had somehow mutated from the traditional, imaginative, individual realm of personal fantasy into an aggressive strain of misguided activism. In so doing it had insulted the public and made itself look far more fearsome than it actually was. My Internet-based metric of "popularity" was detecting something different than I had expected. I was not measuring an increase in the number of conspiracy theorists or in their coherent mobilization behind a single cause. Instead, I was only finding the volume and rancor of the arguments between a few noisy Truthers and everyone else.

The reason for this misguided activism? Social media, says Mackey. The heyday of "9/11 Truth" was also the heyday of MySpace, the first real social networking site to take off. It was also the time when YouTube burst into the public consciousness. I've written before about how and why YouTube is uniquely attractive to conspiracy theorists.
The convergence of these factors, says Mackey, meant it was suddenly easy for misguided Truthers, most of whom are too lazy to go out and do any activism in the real world, to pretend to be activists by forwarding links to YouTube videos supportive of the conspiracy theory. This, combined with the ferocity of how Truthers argue with people who don't support their theories, made it look as if legions of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists were having a real impact on public consciousness--when in fact their decline had already begun.

Is The Truth Movement Dead? Yes.

The refreshing thing about Mackey's paper--and one that comes as welcome news to me, as it should to other debunkers--is its confirmation of what I think most of us have suspected for quite a while now: the 9/11 Truth movement is dead. By that I mean, it is not totally extinct, as you can see from a few hard-core dead-enders out there still preaching the faith, but it's basically "as dead as it's going to get." Mackey has this to say:

With its best days behind it, the Truth Movement is once again just another ordinary conspiracy theory. But there is no reason to assume it will totally disappear. Of the thirty popular conspiracy theories we examined earlier, almost all can still gather attention and spawn debate today, usually in strange corners of the internet such as the David Icke Forum or Above Top Secret. On rare occasions, they may even be seen in real life. I'm betting, however, you won't catch even a glimpse of the Truth Movement.

This is entirely consistent with my own observations. The websites that trafficked in 9/11 Truth in 2005/06 are now either gone or just about dead. Loose Change, which Mackey credits with being a huge boon to the Truth movement, is discredited now--including by its own creator Dylan Avery, who has disavowed most of it. Mark Roberts, the "Obi-Wan Kenobi of debunkers" who ran the single best website to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories on the entire Internet, hasn't updated the site in almost three years. The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 saw virtually no organized activity by Truthers. Indeed, there is little reason to think that 9/11 Truth is going anywhere but into the dustbin of history.

Mackey is also right that it won't ever totally disappear. My latest, and possibly, last debunking effort is against a new Internet conspiracy theory film called Thrive, which mentions (in passing) 9/11 conspiracy theories. I still occasionally get angry responses from Truthers on Twitter who don't like when I say something that supports the "official story." But the chances of 9/11 Truth having a major resurgence are virtually nil. It's just not going to happen.

That is, frankly, a relief.

Is Debunking Worthwhile? Yes, and no.

Some of the most startling issues in Mackey's paper, at least to me, regard his views of debunkers--of which he admits he was (and possibly still is) one. Early in the paper he tackles the very thorny question about whether systematic opposition to 9/11 conspiracy theories--arguing with Truthers on the Internet, basically--has any real point. After concluding that a small portion of his time spent since 2005 pushing back against 9/11 conspiracy theories was worthwhile, Mackey says:

"The majority however was clearly wasted, or more accurately of no value beyond simple entertainment. Like many others, I would often self-justify my involvement with the notion that other readers, those with a less technical background who might be swayed by the Truth Movement, would read my comments and learn from them. Over the years I have received messages and e-mails from a few people who were convinced by my efforts, but only a very few - around ten. Many more (in the hundreds) were those who wrote simply because they too were irritated by Truthers, or engaged in their own arguments against Truthers, and found my contributions useful or amusing. And, of course, there were the Truthers themselves, numbering about forty, who wished only to argue with me on a private channel in addition to the public debate. Some even wrote just to issue vague threats about what would happen to "traitors" and "collaborators" once they achieved their Utopia. There were also a few who were so incoherent that I wondered how they'd managed to operate a computer in the first place. But that's all - a very small group indeed."

This also mirrors my own experience exactly. I do occasionally receive messages of thanks from former conspiracy theorists who have read my stuff and taken from it some useful information with which to change their worldview--such as the fellow who recently thanked me for helping him get out of the pro-conspiracist Zeitgeist Movement. But Mackey's observations about how few these really are, and especially about self-justifying, also ring true.

This may be something that debunkers don't really want to hear. I mean, we spend a lot of time pushing back against these idiotic theories, demonstrating why they're wrong and explaining why people shouldn't believe in them. It's sobering to have someone tell us that most of this time is wasted. But Mackey may have a point. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit it's worth serious consideration.

Who Are Debunkers? Why Do We Do What We Do?

Even more startling than Mackey's views on the usefulness of debunking, however, is his description of who debunkers are and why we do what we do. This may also be unpopular in the skeptic crowd, but it's worth taking a look at what he has to say:

"[T]he "debunkers" opposing the Truth Movement do not merely correct misinformation invented by Truthers, but go further, opposing the mindset and social mechanisms that gave the Truth Movement a place to form. The modern debunkers view the Truth Movement as a defective world view that somehow escaped summary judgment and gained acceptance on the Internet, defying the "system" of the Marketplace of Ideas and thereby requiring a systematic response. Unfortunately, a permanent solution is not actually achievable. There is no way to stamp out all Truthers, particularly not while preserving the spirit of open exchange the Internet supposedly represents.

As a result of this frustration, many debunkers have noticed a reactionary, obsessive behavior appearing in their ranks, one that occasionally manifests with fervor reminiscent of anti-Communism. And strangely, these incidents seem to be increasing, even though the Truth Movement is in full retreat. I uncovered signs of this myself in a small 2009 opinion poll on the JREF Forum, where a plurality of respondents indicated not just willingness, but actual desire, to continue arguing with Truthers to the bitter end."

Again, my own experience has confirmed absolutely what Mackey has said. I recognize this behavior even in myself. There is no question that I believe conspiracy theorists in general, and 9/11 Truthers in particular, have a defective worldview that should be stamped out if at all possible. If deconstructing this worldview is not possible--as I concede it is not--the next best thing is to relegate conspiracy theorists to a permanent status of marginalization, a lunatic fringe with such immediate negative associations that it can never, and will never, achieve any sort of mainstream acceptance. I've certainly directed a lot of effort toward this end, and I believe my efforts have been successful, at least to the limited extent that success is realistically possible in this realm.

In his (and our) defense, Mackey goes on to say:

But while this kind of determined retaliation is counter-productive, it is understandable. After all, if the free market of ideas seems to be failing, many will rush to shore it up. A Utopian Internet that only educates, never misleads, is certainly a worthy goal. It just isn't realistic.

This is also probably true. My own personal motivations for debunking do not stem from a "Utopian" vision of the Internet--I have always accepted, and still do, that the vast majority of the Internet is polluted with worthless crap, and in such an environment toxic mindsets such as conspiracy theories will undoubtedly flourish. I don't take a very philosophical approach to the Internet in general. However, one of my main motivations in debunking is to make sure that there is at least some factually accurate and logically supportable information out there next to the crap--to make sure that someone who Googles "Thrive movie" or "Zeitgeist Movement" at least gets some genuine information instead of propaganda spun to support a conspiracy theorist viewpoint. So, to this extent, I agree with Mackey's observation again.

One thing that should be made clear-and one thing that is in danger of being misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists-is the idea that agreement with Mackey's points regarding the pathology of debunkers implies that any arguments made by debunkers in that context are in any way invalid. Every criticism I have ever made about conspiracy theories, conspiracy movements or cults, or the conspiracy theory worldview is 100% correct so far as I know it, and one of the major tenets of skepticism is to approach things of this nature with facts that can be verified and reasoning that is logically sound. People's reasons for debunking may vary. Whatever they are, it does not affect the content of the arguments they have presented. This is what separates debunkers from conspiracy theorists. Debunkers employ true arguments and cogent reasoning to destroy conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists will not shirk at deploying demonstrably false arguments to support their views, because in their minds the end justifies the means. This point must be clearly understood in order for this evaluation of Mackey's thesis to make sense, but it's a point I suspect will be completely lost on conspiracy nuts.

Do We Have To Worry About Conspiracy Theories?

In the final sections of Mackey's paper, he makes a very interesting argument. He claims that in today's rapid-fire Internet environment, dominated by instant social media like Twitter, the rise and fall of a conspiracy theory which in 2005/06 might have taken years can instead now take weeks, days, or even hours. He gives two interesting examples: the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory, and the supposition, promoted primarily by Truthers, that Osama bin Laden was not killed by U.S. forces on May 1, 2011.

About the first, Mackey says:

The Birther conspiracy theory...made the jump into the mainstream very quickly. Unlike the Truth Movement, it seems to have begun its runaway growth phase in only a matter of months, steeply increasing in popularity from mid-2009 through April 2011. It peaked with something like 30% of Americans believing the conspiracy theory (there is a lot of scatter in the polls), but then rapidly slipped to a stable support level of about 10%. Overall, this trajectory is comparable to the Truth Movement's popularity, except for the greatly accelerated leap into public view.

This behavior is consistent with our theory of Internet-fueled growth: Unlike the Truth Movement, the Birther conspiracy already had activists and an argumentative public, courtesy of an unusually contentious period in politics, and already had social media to spread its message. However, the type of information being discussed was much less engaging - one might spend hours poring over a .GIF image of an old birth certificate...but there just wasn't anything as shocking as 9/11 to be found this time. It thus comes as no surprise that it would enter the mainstream more quickly, attract a significant number of low-commitment supporters as before, and then dissipate once the conspiracists had exhausted their argument."

About the Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory--the "Deathers"-he says this:

We see a similar pattern in the Deather conspiracy theory, except here the timeline is compressed even further. This conspiracy theory exploded into the mainstream at the same speed as the news story it challenged, reaching the media almost instantly. One amusing note comes from David Wiegel of Slate, who referred to "Osama bin Trutherism" in an opinion piece on the very day bin Laden's death was announced. A few polls showed a sudden spike of believers, as high as 20% to 30% in various hastily-conducted media surveys, but after only a week it was clear that the conspiracy theory was already in decline. As Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling described it on 10 May 2011, only half-joking, "we've got more voters who think the President is the Anti-Christ than think Osama bin Laden is still alive.

From the standpoint of debunkers, I was on the front lines during the rise and fall of the "Deather" theory. Mackey points out that this theory was spread primarily by Twitter. I am a very heavy Twitter user. On the morning after bin Laden's death was announced, I was already responding to angry @ replies by conspiracy theorists--many of them undoubtedly Truthers--who had begun to argue that bin Laden wasn't really dead, or that the circumstances of his death were very different than reported, etc. Within 12 hours of the announcement of bin Laden's death, I was already armed with links to news stories and other sources that indicated the true circumstances behind bin Laden's death and especially his hasty burial at sea, and I was deploying them against the "Deathers" who used the same sort of spurious arguments that Truthers used to try to show that 9/11 was an inside job. However, I remember being surprised that "Deatherism" died out (no pun intended) within a week. Now it is extremely rare for me to be directly confronted with a bin Laden death conspiracy theory, on Twitter or anywhere else. This conspiracy theory is also dead.

Is there hope in these examples? Mackey seems to think so. The Internet now moves much faster than it did in 2005/06, and even much faster than in early 2009 when Orly Taitz was out there pushing her Birther garbage. Now, Mackey argues, it is possible to witness the entire life-cycle of a major conspiracy theory in a matter of days. His observations about how conspiracy theories peak among people with "low commitment" to them, and then fade to about a 10% support rate, is extremely interesting. 9/11 Truth is now at about this level, and most of us (debunkers) think 9/11 Truth is the biggest and baddest conspiracy theory on the block. If Birtherism and Deatherism can rise, peak and fade so quickly, do we need to be concerned about future conspiracy theories?

Are we ever going to get another conspiracy theory like 9/11? A theory that is prominent enough to create social movements and cults, like the Zeitgeist Movement? Hopefully an event like 9/11 will never happen again, but even if it does, there is some suggestion in Mackey's analysis that perhaps the conspiracy theories that would inevitably result from it might have much less public saturation and staying power than 9/11 theories. We can only hope.

Conclusion

9/11 conspiracy theories are utterly untrue. They are asinine, insulting, brain-corroding garbage. That is beyond question. In analyzing why these ridiculous theories took hold--among conspiracy theorists and debunkers alike--Mackey has given us, I think, some very valuable insights not only into the pathology of conspiracy theories, but into the minds of those who believe them and those who push back against them.

I am certainly what Mackey would consider a "high commitment" debunker, meaning, I feel it is particularly important to push back against conspiracy theories. I am also quite possibly a product of my times. I came to the debunking community in 2005, just about the time 9/11 Truth theories were exploding, and my first real forum of debunking was on MySpace, the first serious social networking website. MySpace, of course, is dead. No one goes there anymore. 9/11 Truth is virtually dead; almost no one believes it anymore. We now live in an age of Twitter, Google Plus and communications that move at a speed impossible to believe even in 2005. Perhaps, lurking behind Mackey's fascinating analysis, is an argument that exactly the thing that propagates conspiracy theories in the modern world--the Internet--can also serve as a limitation on their reach. I sincerely hope that is true.

Thanks for reading.

Written By Muertos

reposted by Clock

If you have any questions or opinions about this article, read the Disclaimer page.


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It is a question that drives conspiracy theorists, and other traffickers in fringe beliefs, batty:

Why don't more experts and academicians agree with me?

It's a fair question. If a conspiracy theorist or other fringe believer, who is typically not an academician him or herself, has been convinced of something nutty--that 9/11 was an inside job, that Christianity is a false construct, that aliens visited the earth in ancient times, that global warming is a hoax, that colloidal silver cures cancer, etc.--it is difficult to understand why experts in various fields aren't convinced by the same "evidence." Usually the answer in the conspiracy theorist's mind comes down to a dismissal of the value, independence, or honesty of experts and academicians: "They are all part of the Establishment. The truth I believe in fundamentally challenges the Establishment. Therefore, they're either unable to recognize that it's true, or afraid to endorse it."

This blog will explain why this position is incorrect, and even absurd. I will do so by utilizing three case studies of fringe believers who can't get any legitimate experts to sign on to their theories: Acharya S./D.M. Murdock, who claims that Christianity is a hoax; Erich von Däniken, who promotes the "ancient astronaut" theory; and Steven Jones, who maintains that the World Trade Center towers were blown up on 9/11 by "controlled demolition."


1. How Academia Really Works

First, the groundwork. Conspiracy theorists and fringe believers generally think that academia and the world of experts is a small, close-knit, elitist club where an "official" orthodoxy is rigidly enforced and extreme peer pressure maintains order. In this ivory tower that conspiracy theorists think academicians live in, the slightest deviation from the "official line" is a career-destroying move for any expert. He or she will be blacklisted, unable to publish, drummed out of faculty departments and brutally ridiculed by his or her former colleagues. In the world of conspiracy theorists and fringe believers, this orthodoxy holds fast even if the facts it is based on are demonstrably false--comparisons are often drawn to the geocentric view of astronomy that Copernicus challenged in the sixteenth century, or the (actually incorrect) assertion that "before Columbus, everyone thought the world was flat."

There's just one problem with this view. It simply isn't true.

I am formerly a lawyer, but I now work in academia. My colleagues and superiors are well-trained and respected historians. They have put in years of research and are well-versed in the methodology of history in everything from medieval Japan to U.S. nuclear policy in the 1960s. But getting them to agree on anything is impossible.

Academics have a reputation for being idiosyncratic and curmudgeonly. Sometimes that is true. Anyone who's ever attended a faculty meeting, though, knows immediately that trying to drive academicians in any particular direction is like trying to herd cats. You just can't do it. So the idea that there is some sort of rigid orthodoxy, especially one that's artificially imposed by a government or other "Establishment" actor, is simply laughable.

Furthermore, not only is the research of academicians not intended to reinforce any sort of "official line" on anything, but most of them actively seek to expand the boundaries of their field in new and previously undiscovered directions. After all, being the pioneer of a new line of study ensures academic immortality. Einstein is famous, and justly so, for being the first physicist to describe relativity. Everyone's heard of Maynard Keynes because he pioneered a new type of economics. Doing something new, different and revolutionary is every academician's dream. They constantly seek new avenues of inquiry in all fields from science to sociology. Closing yourself off to new ideas is the kiss of death for an academician.

But what is also the kiss of death--an even quicker and more final death--is to commit academic malpractice. Academicians are, after all, professionals in their field. They don't get there by ignoring the tenets on which their expertise is based. If those tenets turn out to be flawed, part of the academician's job is to question and reexamine them. But if the tenets are sound, ignoring them is, by definition, the mark of a bad expert.

Let's use two quick, simple examples. Suppose I break my arm and go see a medical doctor. How bones break, and how they heal, is clearly understood by medical science. It is not inconceivable that in the future medical science may develop some technology to re-grow broken bones faster or in a more efficient and healthful way. Perhaps, if I was lucky and willing to take a risk, my broken arm could be healed by such a revolutionary new method. But that method would rest upon, and be consistent with, what's already known about how bones break and how they heal. Whether the doctor puts my arm in a cast (the old-fashioned way) or grows me a new humerus with fancy stem cells (the revolutionary new way), my arm is still going to heal using the same biological processes as have been understood for a long time about how broken bones heal.

Now say, instead of going to a doctor for either an old-fashioned cast or a new-fangled cure, I see a doctor who promises that my bone will heal by doing nothing other than dabbling colloidal silver on it. Perhaps the doctor has some arcane theory as to how colloidal silver re-grows bones. Obviously my arm isn't going to heal. Equally obviously, the doctor who prescribes colloidal silver for a broken arm is a quack. Why? Because colloidal silver as a treatment for broken bones does not rest upon, and does not comport with, anything that medical science knows about healing bones. A doctor who prescribes colloidal silver, and nothing else, for broken bones isn't going to remain a doctor for long. He'll be drummed out of the profession quickly because--no matter how fervently he may believe his theory about colloidal silver--he's committing malpractice.

Think of it this way: if colloidal silver really did work to heal broken bones, wouldn't medical science have at least some inkling of it? Why would the quack know this and no legitimate doctor wouldn't? Even if they couldn't explain how or why it works, wouldn't somebody in the medical profession be saying, "Hey, you know, I'm not sure how this colloidal silver works, but it appears to be effective"? In short: if there was anything to the quack's theory, wouldn't someone other than the quack have said something about it?

This is an extreme example, but keep the principle in mind as we examine the following case studies.


2. Acharya S./D.M. Murdock: Pseudohistorian.

"Acharya S." is the pen name of one D.M. Murdock, an author from Seattle whose claim to fame is the advancement of the "Christ myth theory:" basically the idea that Jesus never existed and Christianity is a hoax constructed by ancient political and religious leaders from various pagan practices, especially sun worship. Murdock first advanced her theory in a 1999 self-published book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, which she has followed up with numerous books since then which all harp on the same theory. Murdock/Acharya is well known to conspiracy theorists. Her views on the supposed nonexistence of Christ were a cornerstone of Peter Joseph Merola's 2007 conspiracy theorist film Zeitgeist: The Movie, which itself spawned the Zeitgeist Movement, a movement whose main (but not officially acknowledged) goal is the dissemination of conspiracy theories.

Murdock is not really an academic in the classic sense. She holds no advanced degrees. She has a bachelor's degree in classics from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and attended for a year an archaeological institute in Greece. (cite) As she passionately espouses on her website, she believes these credentials are sufficient to qualify her to rewrite the history of Judeo-Christian civilization. (In fact, at the start of her passionate defense of her own credentials, she charges that any attempt to question her work based on her lack of them is an "ad hominem attack." Conspiracy theorists love the words ad hominem).

Murdock believes Christ never existed and that evil power-hungry political and religious leaders thought him up, cribbing from Egyptian sun myths, the life of Buddha and other sources. She gets there, as all pseudohistorians do, by cherry-picking sources and drawing very strained interpretations of ancient history and astronomy. Her books are not peer-reviewed. They are self-published through her own press, Stellar House Publishing. So far as I can tell, Stellar House Publishing publishes no other authors other than Murdock. Searching on JSTOR and other academic databases at my university, I couldn't even find a review of any of Murdock's books--not even to denounce them. The legitimate academic community doesn't even care enough about Murdock to waste a page in some journal refuting her.

Yet, there are thousands of historians, archaeologists and researchers out there with advanced degrees in classics, ancient history, archaeology, and religious studies--degrees that Murdock does not have--and each and every one of them would love to have something new, cutting-edge and revolutionary to write about. Strangely, not one of them is writing about what Murdock is writing about. No dissertations or research theses are being churned out of the Notre Dame or Berkeley history departments that even remotely comport with Murdock's theories. With as desperate as academics are for cutting-edge stuff, you'd think that one of them would have found her by now, or would at least be nibbling at the edges of the body of work she claims to have interpreted correctly. But they aren't. Why? Because to advance the "Christ conspiracy" theory is academic malpractice. Why is it malpractice? Because it isn't true.

Murdock and the Zeitgeist conspiracy theorists would have you believe that the reason legitimate academia pays no attention to her is because her theories are "too radical" and violate the orthodoxy of academic study in ancient history, or because it's somehow "taboo" to claim that Christ never existed or isn't holy. One need not remind Murdock and the Zeitgeisters that there are more than just Christians researching ancient history. Learned universities in the Islamic world and in Asia employ historians, archaeologists and researchers every bit as competent as the ones in the West. Strangely those people--who, being Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintos or atheists, certainly have no personal or professional attachment to the idea of Christ--haven't picked up on Murdock's theories either.

So the idea of Christ not existing is so taboo that the devout Muslim head of the history department at the University of Cairo is quaking in his boots to take on the topic? Who's not going to publish him for taking that stance? Who's not going to give him a grant for doing that sort of research?

There must, therefore, be another reason why no one in the academic community is talking about Murdock's ideas. You don't have to look hard to find it: they're not talking about her ideas because her ideas have no factual merit. They're so obviously identifiable as false, the unvetted work of an amateur, that even the devoutly Muslim head of the history department at the University of Cairo wouldn't touch them. Any academic advancing them would be advancing a falsehood. If they weren't false, somebody other than Murdock would be working on them. Just as if colloidal silver cured broken bones, somebody legitimate within the medical science field would be working on it--somebody, somewhere, at some institution.

Because the total academic indifference to Acharya S. cannot be explained by anything other than the notion that her ideas and research are so wrong as to constitute academic malpractice to assert them, it is entirely legitimate and appropriate to dismiss them. Acharya S. isn't ignored by the academic community because her work violates some "taboo." Even if that were the case--and remember I told you that academia doesn't work that way anyway--ancient historians and archaeologists would be writing article after article dismissing her. Acharya S. is ignored by the academic community because her theories are ridiculous. She's the classic example of a pseudohistorian.

Acharya S. has a lot of supporters, especially conspiracy theorists in the Zeitgeist Movement. I will probably get hate mail regarding this blog to the effect of, "You haven't debunked anything! You haven't disproven a single claim of Acharya S.!" This criticism is asinine and betrays the fundamental misunderstanding by conspiracy theorists such as Zeitgeisters of the academic process. In academia, someone's assertions are not judged on a "true unless proven otherwise" standard. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Your assertions are judged to be a tissue of lies until they've been thoroughly vetted by the peer-review process. This is why graduate students have to defend their dissertations. You're judged to be a liar until you prove you are correct.

The question, therefore, is not, what does Acharya S. get wrong, but what does she get right? The burden of proof is on her to show that her theories hold any water. She cannot meet that burden. Until she can, no one is obligated to give her the time of day.

3. Erich von Däniken: Pseudohistorian and Pseudoarchaeologist.

D.M. Murdock is one in a long line of pseudohistorians whose work strikes a chord with the public but who is shunned by the academic community. The granddaddy of them all is Swiss author Erich von Däniken, whose famous 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? proposed the idea that extraterrestrials visited Earth in prehistoric times, helping primitive humans build such things as Stonehenge or the Nazca Lines. Chariots of the Gods? was a runaway bestseller and is still in print. The "ancient astronauts" idea has achieved such cultural resonance that it has become a central plot element of many books and movies, most notably the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The most amazing thing about von Däniken is that he's taken as "seriously" as he is. His credentials are even thinner than D.M. Murdock's--in researching this blog I looked for some notation of any professional degrees held by von Däniken and have found nothing. Even his own homepage doesn't list any degrees. You would think if he was trained, for instance, as an archaeologist or an Egyptologist he'd trumpet it from the rooftops. So we can assume, unless someone can correct me, that von Däniken has no degrees in what he claims to specialize in.

As for his claims themselves, they scarcely need refutation here. (If you want refutation trythis and this). Suffice it to say that von Däniken's theories rest upon shallow and ethnocentric assumptions about ancient peoples: that, simply because they were ancient and more "backwards" than we, they couldn't have built the pyramids or Stonehenge with the technology they possessed. Of course this is ridiculous. They could, and they did. The belief that modern technology is the sina qua non of civilization is a dangerous ideology called "high modernism," a viewpoint that I blogged on at length earlier (here). The Egyptians were no less brilliant architects and engineers than the people who built the World Trade Centers. In fact they may have been considerably more so. Von Däniken's reasoning is shallow and simply silly.

Yet he sells books. Still, more than 40 years later. Again think of the quack doctor and his colloidal silver. If von Däniken had a point, wouldn't someone other than von Däniken be making it? If there really was any evidence of "ancient astronauts," wouldn't Carl Sagan, the founder of Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), have been interested in that? Wouldn't it have validated his entire life's ambition, which was to find evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence? In fact Sagan denounced von Däniken publicly and notoriously. If von Däniken's theories had any credibility, Sagan could have built his career on bringing them into the mainstream. He didn't. Ever wonder why that is?

4. Steven Jones: Pseudoscientist.

Our final case study involves Steven E. Jones, the former Brigham Young University physicist who had, not one, but two high-profile flirtations with pseudoscience, the latter resulting in the end of his career. If you troll in the conspiracy underground you've no doubt heard of Jones. He's one of only two people with significant scientific degrees who are out there claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. The other, for the record, believes the towers were destroyed by super duper beam weapons from outer space.

Jones, unlike Murdock and von Däniken, at least was a real academic. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from Vanderbilt University and once worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Long before 9/11, though, he got into a bit of trouble by claiming he and some other BYU professors had observed "muon-catalyzed fusion"--popularly known as cold fusion. Whether or not cold fusion is a scientific possibility, the bottom line was that Jones's experiments couldn't be replicated, although other scientists later discovered why they thought Jones came to the conclusions that he did. ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001EL.....54..449C) Jones would not be known as a pseudoscientist if he'd left it at this, though he probably wishes he could have.

Then, 12 years after the cold fusion controversy, Osama bin Laden's hijackers attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Jones became the poster boy for the 9/11 Truth movement when he began advocating for the "controlled demolition" hypothesis and then later published a paper claiming he found "iron microspheres" in paint chips from the World Trade Center, which he convinced himself was somehow evidence of controlled demolition. What happened? BYU cashiered him in 2006.

You can read all about why Jones's theories are wrong here (http://debunking911.com/jones.htm) That's not the point of this blog. Note, however, that Jones's paper was not published in a peer-reviewed journal--he paid $800 to have it published in an obscure Korean journal that does not use traditional peer-review processes--and that his thesis has been denounced by other scientists who (curiously) have not been canned from their universities. Here we have the same pattern as Acharya S. and Erich von Däniken: either academic indifference, or active refutation by legitimate academics. But nowhere is there the hint of legitimate academia finding any support for Jones's theories.

Conspiracy theorists claim that academics are afraid to support Jones, even though he is supposedly right, because they fear some sort of official retribution. Once more this assumption is revealed as silly when you think of who actually comprises academic departments. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that scientists exist in total lockstep with government orthodoxy, and any deviation from the "official line" brings horrible consequences. (Some even claim what happened to Jones is an example of those horrible consequences--as if somehow George W. Bush or whoever is supposed to have blown up the WTC towers called the BYU faculty and told them to can Jones. Yeah, right). If 9/11 was an inside job, though--meaning, if Jones's theory had any validity--the scientist(s) who exposed it would be lauded as national heroes and brave patriots. Why would they have any interest in helping the government cover up the murder of 3,000 innocent people? In all of academia there isn't one scientist--excepting Steven Jones--who has one ounce of decency or morality? Not one?

Steven Jones's own behavior demonstrates the fallacy of this argument. We can assume that Steven Jones honestly believes the towers were brought down by controlled demolition. Look how tenaciously he defends the conspiracy theory. Despite years of being debunked, Jones continues to hammer his tinfoil hat theories. He seems to have no problem going against "orthodoxy," so why should other academicians? In order for the conspiracy theorists' conception of academia to be true, Jones must be, by definition, qualitatively different in ethics, morality and professional courage than every other physicist in the United States (if not the world). If you assume that Jones's theories are actually true, he is automatically more moral, ethical and courageous than every single other physicist in the world. If you accept Jones's theory as fact you have no choice but to believe this no matter how arrogant it sounds. What, then, sets Jones apart from all his other colleagues--the "sheeple" who are supposedly so cowed by this official academic orthodoxy that they'll avoid speaking out against a factually untrue story and a monstrously unjust act of murder? Is Steven Jones that different, in courage and moral character, from all of his other colleagues?

He may believe he is--and 9/11 Truthers would certainly maintain that he is--but I venture to say that what's different about Jones as opposed to his colleagues isn't the same thing. The difference is this: all of them realize he's wrong, but he doesn't. For whatever reason he can't see the scientific, logical and empirical flaws in his ridiculous theory. He is the outlier--whereas, to hear conspiracy theorists tell it, Jones is the only one who's right and every other physicist in the world is wrong. Yes, every other one.

Let's assume there are 8 million physicists in the world total. Which is more likely? That Steven Jones is factually correct and more morally and professionally courageous than 7,999,999 of his colleagues? Or that Jones is the one that's wrong, and the 7,999,999 physicists who don't believe in controlled demolition have the better argument?

What's really happening here is very clear. Jones got drummed out of the profession because he committed academic malpractice. None of his colleagues want to follow him out on that limb, not because they're afraid of peer pressure or the big bad government, but because they can't get behind a demonstrably false theory. Jones is wrong. The academics who shun him are right.

Conclusion

The real world of academics and experts bears little resemblance to the one imagined by conspiracy theorists and fringe believers. In reality there is no rigid orthodoxy, no brutal peer pressure to conform to false realities, no swift and terrible retribution for standing up against an arbitrary officially-derived "party line." Academics hunger for something new, different and paradigm-shifting. If there was any possible chance that the routes of inquiry urged on them by conspiracy theorists and fringe believers had any validity, academics would jump all over it in an attempt to be the first to expand the boundaries of their own discipline, and thus attain academic and intellectual immortality.

In our world of increasingly specialized functions and mountains of information, expert opinion does matter. Academics exist for a reason. Advanced degrees are difficult and expensive to get on purpose, to make sure that the people who obtain them have what it takes to do good work in their respective fields. Conspiracy theorists and fringe believers see none of this. To them, amateur understanding is on par with, or even superior to, expert opinion. The divinity of Christ can be disproven by a self-published author from Seattle. A Swiss ufologist with no expert training can rewrite all of human history. A screwy physicist who fell for a conspiracy theory can be morally and ethically superior to every other one of his colleagues on the planet.

That is the Bizarro world in which conspiracy theorists dwell. They may take great comfort in their delusions, but the real world should be left to the experts. It just might be that they're experts for a reason.

****ATTENTION*****
I am not Muertos and I do not know him. I am simply reposting these articles because I had found them on the Internet Wayback Machine. Do not contact me when it comes to this blog, I am not its author and my views are not necessarily his. REPEAT: I AM NOT MUERTOS.

Enjoy.
-Clock
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Chapter V: Thriving.

My involvement with debunking Thrive is replete with ironies. I didn't even want to do it. Well, part of me obviously did; the blog Thrive Debunked is the single largest and most time-consuming debunking project of my entire seven years of refuting conspiracy theories. But when an email from a friend arrived in November 2011 asking me if I'd seen the trailers for a new conspiracy film that was about to hit the Internet, I had already decided to quit debunking. The "darkness" that I talked about in the last chapter was getting too much for me. Besides, it seemed that my work was largely done. The Zeitgeist Movement had folded, and it appeared that Desteni was on the ropes too. Very few people believed in 9/11 Truth anymore. There wasn't much left to debunk.

I watched the trailer for Thrive on YouTube. Almost instantly it made me very angry, and also filled me with despair. Here was a very slick, visually appealing production, obviously made with a substantial budget ($7 million, or so I heard). It was the brainchild of Proctor and Gamble heir Foster Gamble. And it was packed wall-to-wall with conspiracy nonsense and New Age tropes: crop circles, UFOs, ancient aliens, free energy suppression, the New World Order, population control, RFID chips, 9/11, Rockefellers, big bankers, the whole nine yards. It was the Ziegfeld Follies of conspiracy theories. You could almost imagine Gamble breaking into song and a softshoe number with dancing girls in elaborate headdresses walking down a tower of dollar bills with the All-Seeing Eye and the WTC towers in the background, a la Busby Berkeley. It was, in a word, ludicrous.

Thrive made me despair because I thought it had the potential to be another Zeitgeist: The Movie, which was obviously what its makers intended. I'd spent the better part of two years pushing back against the nonsense in Zeitgeist, and here was another conspiracy movie--much prettier and more competently made--unleashing the bacillus of conspiracy theories out into the world yet again. It was like washing your car, getting it sparkling clean, and then as you're putting the hose away you see thunderclouds gathering for an epic drenching. It felt almost like a personal snub.

I also realized there was an opportunity. Thrive was just then coming out. (At that time you could only see it on the Thrive movie's website, and you had to pay $5 for the privilege). If debunkers acted fast and established a significant web presence refuting the film, they could expose potential fans to the facts about the movie contemporaneously with their discovery of it. Zeitgeist had a honeymoon with the public for about two years before serious organized debunkings began to appear on the Internet. Thrive could not be allowed to enjoy such a honeymoon. The net moved much faster in 2011 than it had in 2009, and it seemed that the time to start debunking Thrive was now--right now. If we did that, we could strangle Thrive in its cradle.

I debunked the trailer for Thrive before I even saw the full movie. I didn't want to give Foster Gamble $5 for having him spew conspiracy theories at me, so I figured someone in my circle would eventually give me the film (someone did, less than a week later). Right after posting the trailer debunking I created a Wordpress blog called Thrive Debunked, mainly to grab the URL before anyone else did. My model was Screw Loose Change, whose major contribution to debunking that piece of malarkey was a "viewer's guide" that exhaustively refuted all the claims in the movie.

The two hours I spent watching the full Thrive movie for the first time were two of the most hellish hours in my life. It was that bad. It almost made me physically ill. I could feel brain cells dying by the thousands with each excruciating minute of this fulsome, intelligence-insulting geek show. I viewed it as sort of a homework assignment. I collected many pages of notes and then set about breaking down the movie into its constituent parts. The blogs started going up in late November, with the debunking of the "Global Domination Agenda" (Illuminati/NWO by another name) being the most important.

I expected Thrive Debunked would be popular among skeptics, but would have little resonance beyond that. I was totally unprepared for what happened. The blog became wildly popular, with several hundred unique page views a day by the beginning of December. More people read Thrive Debunked in its first month of operation than have read this blog in the entire three years it's been online.

And the comments...dear God, the comments! They came fast and furious, usually furious. People were outraged that I had criticized Thrive. Some of the movie's fans were absolutely unhinged, so insensate with anger that I could feel their white-hot hatred bleeding through my computer screen. I had the settings on the blog such that I received an email each time a comment was posted. By the end of 2011 my email box was crammed to the rafters with Thrive Debunked comments. Hundreds of them; eventually thousands. At least 75% of the comments were hostile. All the epithets that conspiracy theorists had been flinging at me for years--stupid, ignorant, closed-minded, evil, retarded, paid disinformation agent, etc.--were thrown at me all over again by fans of Thrive, many of whom (ironically) purported to be all about peace, love and understanding. I received death threats, only some of which I chose to publicize. Some of them were deeply disturbing. I had not just gone into the darkness. I had leapt into its depths with abandon, wrapped myself up in it and let it embrace me.

Yet there were good people too, and supportive ones. Several people emailed me or left comments to the effect that they were very glad I'd taken the bull by the horns and sought to refute Thrive as quickly and forcefully as I had. No other debunkers were working on Thrive, at least not exclusively. People would contact me with tips or ideas for stories, or to contribute information they knew about the movie or its makers. Some of them became friends. Of all my debunking efforts, Thrive Debunked was the most collaborative.

The most important epiphany of my seven years of debunking came in January 2012 while working on Thrive Debunked. I had an email exchange with a British academic who had cited Thrive Debunked on his own blog. As it turned out, the academic was doing research on conspiracy theories from the standpoint of religion. What he told me--that Thrive represented a new trend of melding conspiracy theories with New Age sensibilities in a sort of quasi-religious context--suddenly made sense of all the changes I'd seen in the conspiracy underground since 2005. That conversation became the article "How the Conspiracy World is Changing," which I think is the most important article I've ever written on the subject of conspiracy theories. It explains how the conspiracy world has been evolving. Today's conspiracy theorists, unlike the Truthers of 2005-06, aren't out to convert the world to accepting their erroneous version of the facts. Instead, conspiracy theories are being used to sell belief systems. The facts of the theories are incidental. Other researchers have begun noting this too. Two British academics even coined a name for this emerging belief system: "conspirituality." Their article on it, published in early 2011, cited the Zeitgeist Movement as the paradigm example.

As soon as I realized this, I knew that I, as a debunker, would soon be extinct. The war was reaching its end, and our side was losing. Because conspiracy beliefs are susceptible to being rebutted by the facts, the conspiracy peddlers of tomorrow will seek to neutralize this disadvantage by cutting facts out of the equation. They will profess that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Illuminati controls the world not as matters of fact, but matters of faith. Conspiracy theories will become a religion. You can't attack a religion on factual grounds. Those of us armed with facts--debunkers--will have no more utility in this new order. Our enemies will destroy us, the rational people of the world, by making us irrelevant.

Not long after I had this depressing epiphany, the battles over Thrive reached their crescendo. In April 2012, ten people interviewed in the film signed a letter repudiating it and dissociating themselves from it. The leader of the dissociators, John Robbins, wrote several extremely eloquent statements condemning Thrive on precisely the same grounds that I criticized it--and he did a much better job of explaining his opposition than I ever could. The dissociation effectively killed Thrive in the minds of the public. Immediately after the story broke, page views on Thrive Debunked began to go down. The public was losing interest in this film. It would not be another Zeitgeist. In a very telling move, one of my contributors sent me a link to a discussion page behind the scenes at Wikipedia where editors were deciding whether or not to make a Wikipedia page on the film. They decided not to. Reason: it wasn't notable enough.

There were still a few fireworks to come. Foster Gamble himself engaged me in debate, posting through blog comments. I knew there was little chance I could get through to him--the man believes in the HAARP earthquake machine, for God's sake!--but I did my best. Personally, I was not quite ready to let go of debunking. The darkness, horrible as it was, had become very comfortable. I tried to quit debunking several times, the way others try to quit smoking or gambling. There is no 12-step program for conspiracy debunkers. My family urged me to quit. What are you getting out of this? they asked me, especially after they saw the death threats. What makes this worth it? Why should we have to worry about you because of the ignorant beliefs of these crazy people? Why would you let their ignorance and stupidity affect our family?

Thrive Debunked is now almost finished. I've begun turning over the blog to others, such as the very capable SlayerX3, one of those contributors who became my friends. In a way it's a happy ending: the dragon of Thrive has been largely slain, and with the film totally discredited by its own participants, it has little chance of being resurrected. Oh, it will linger out there, like the rusting hulk of a wrecked ship bleeding oil into the water for decades. That's the problem with conspiracy theories. They never go away.

In a way, though, the ending is a sad one. The tide of bullshit surging through our world is simply too big. You can surf on it for a while, but eventually you're going to wipe out. The best you can do is to keep your own sanity and not lose your perspective. That's easier said than done.