As astounding as it may be, conspiracy theorists are not necessarily crazy. As Eric Rauchway points out on his TNR blog:
Conspiracy theory is not, Hofstadter and McLemee note, crazy: It's
super-rational. In conspiracy theory, someone is in charge--someone meant for
things to be this way. This is obviously, if oddly comforting to lots of people:
Maybe it's a wicked world full of snares for the unwary, but at least there's a
spider at the center of the web.The alternative metaphor is harder to accept: This bad world is like an onion whose layers you peel back, weeping, only to find there's nothing at the center.
Popular Mechanics went to great lengths to debunk all of the 9/11 conspiracy theories that existed over a year ago. Yet there are those who still maintain it was an inside job.
Today, the editor of Popular Mechanics, James Meigs, had this to say :
Conspiracy theories alleging that 9/11 was a U.S. government operation are
rapidly infiltrating the mainstream. These notions are advanced by hundreds of
books, over a million Web pages and even in some college classrooms. The movie
"Loose Change," a slick roundup of popular conspiracy claims, has become an
Internet sensation.
Worse, these fantasies are gaining influence on the international stage. French author Thierry Meyssan's "The Big Lie," which argues that the U.S. military orchestrated the attacks, was a bestseller in France, and his claims have been widely repeated in European and Middle Eastern media. And recent surveys reveal that, even in moderate Muslim countries such as Turkey and Jordan, majorities of the public believe that no Arab terrorists were involved in the attacks.
The real conspiracy is the conspiracy that states there's a conspiracy.
