Conspiracy Theory and Culture

 

I returned to Conway Hall for another esoteric event, this time hosted by the London Fortean Society, a group I have always liked and I have been to many of their public meetings, for example: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2018/02/ian-ridpath-at-fortean-london.html and: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-skeptics-guide-to-aliens.html. Conway Hall was also the scene of one of the best one-day conferences ever, the British Humanist Association Conspiracy Theory Conference in which the late great Ian R Crane truly shone out, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html. This was a more modest affair in one of the smaller rooms; an afternoon of discussions about conspiracy theory. It was organized by Prof. Chris French and Deborah Hyde and was therefore very skeptical. There were four speakers, Jonn Elledge, James Ball, Brent Lee and Frenchie himself. Excuse me if I save myself some time and effort, but being an expert in skepticology and a connoisseur of the skeptispherical conference circuit, I heard very little information today that I have not heard before; therefore I will focus on the new information and provide you with background links for any material I have covered previously. Both Elledge and French were selling new books on the stall and they both have very provocative titles containing strong language. Jonn's is called: Conspiracy- A History of Bollocks Theories and How Not to Fall for Them... not really very equivocal in his views there is he? He ran through the history of conspiracy theory, with a bit of humour, as he says. The first historically recorded conspiracy theory was far more ancient than I thought, it was way back in 19 AD. The Roman Caesar Germanicus predicted his own assassination. This emperor, after whom the country Michael Shrimpton believes is behind the New World Order is named, was allegedly killed by a conspiracy led by someone called Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, but the suspect committed suicide just before his trial, or did he? Interestingly this was exactly two thousand years before Jeffrey Epstein. In the early 19th century there was a conspiracy theory that cholera was spread deliberately by poison administered by (insert your chosen nominee for who causes all the world's evil here). Of course cholera is really caused by a toxic bacterium that grows in dirty water, as we later found out. The point being that history generally proves conspiracy theories to be false, but not always of course. Just try Googling: "conspiracy theories proven true". The issue of missing history is something I've not made my mind up about. The theory of "Tartaria" or the "mud flood" is very popular among flat earthers, of which I am not one; but I must admit there's something to it. This is even though its claim is utterly astonishing, that history literally before the mid 20th century is a sham. This video contains most of the best information, see: https://www.bitchute.com/video/M3EnybRMuGbR/. Another thing I found astonishing is that allegedly Bertrand Russell started questioning the official story of the Kennedy assassination shortly before his death in 1969. That surprised me. Russell is famous for being the ultimate atheo-skeptiko-materialist. Readers of HPANWO will know him best for being a massive MBAer, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2013/09/andrew-copson-mba.html. Maybe he fell off the wagon in his twilight years. See here for Jonn's blog: https://jonnelledge.wordpress.com.

James Ball is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is best known for his work with WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. Despite his awareness therefore that conspiracies and lies exist, he has written a new book which I unfortunately cannot name because Blogger has started imposing the same censorship as the rest of mainstream social media, but it concerns the subject I have nicknamed "P*R", see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2022/08/pr-portal.html. He takes a very dim view of belief in this matter. What really made me sit up was that he suspects that an intelligence service made an attempt to recruit him. He was groomed while he was at university, which is the usual method. He didn't say which agency it was and it's possible he does not know. "Talent scouts" don't usually go up to you and say: "Hey, buddy. Ever fancied a career in MI6?" No, it's far more subtle than that. I describe the process in fictional form here: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-obscurati-chronicles-sample-fourth.html. See here for James' website: https://www.jamesrball.com. Chris French's new book is entitled: The Science of Weird Shit- Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal. It's strange how in the last few years it has become acceptable to swear in book titles. In fact the aforementioned James Ball has a book called Post-Truth- How Bullshit Conquered the World. Stephen Law also has a book out with the BS-word in the title. French brought up one thing I'd not heard of before. Apparently some skeptics decided to pull a Carlos hoax about Red Bull and tell the world that the slogan in the drink's advert: "Red Bull gives you wings!" originated from a laboratory experiment in which Red Bull was fed to rats and it made them literally grow vestigial wings on their bodies; and of course it was all covered up by (insert your chosen nominee for who causes all the world's evil here). Supposedly a large number of "buh-leevahz" repeated this falsehood without question. I don't think I'd have fallen for it, had I known. I wonder if Red Bull sued them. Somebody recently had to issue an apology for saying incorrectly that the drink contains bull's sperm. See here for Frenchie's profile at Goldsmiths: https://www.gold.ac.uk/psychology/staff/french/.

The most interesting speaker was Brent Lee. Brent is somebody I've been following online for some time, in fact I knew him vaguely over twenty years ago when he used to post on the old David Icke Forum. Brent was once a fully fledged woo-woo like me, but during the 20-teens he began to have doubts. In 2015 he dropped out of the online Truther world and by 2021 he decided to speak out about his experiences becoming an ex-conspiracy theorist. Brent became quite emotional as he spoke. He described his early life, experiencing his mother's two divorces and the domestic violence of his first step-father. Chris French didn't make this point in his speech today, but in the past he has related that a troubled childhood in which the parents harm their child, or fail to protect them from harm, can result in an increased tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. I must admit this includes me, as I have explained before, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/09/centaur.html and: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/10/am-i-gate-child.html. However, just because this psychological condition may well be real, it does not necessarily have any bearing on the factual nature, or otherwise, of what we believe. It was nice to meet Brent and we got on well. He has received a lot of aggravation from the online Conspirasphere which he does not deserve. I have defended him wherever I can. He has taken a path which he believes is right; while I have taken a different path. That does not make either of us "bad people!"; we are trying to be sincere about how we see the world; and we're both entitled to a bit of basic human compassion. People do not choose their beliefs. See here for the programme he presents with Neil Sanders: https://www.somedarecallitconspiracy.com and: https://www.tinfoilconfessions.com. I talk about Brent in more detail here: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/09/conspiracy-theory-deprogramming.html.

During the question and answer session at the end, a linguist spoke out against the conspiracy theory that Latin is a constructed language. It was allegedly invented by the Vatican in the Middle Ages. I had not heard of this one either, but I'm guessing it's related to the Tartaria theory. I have read in Mark Devlin's book about how English is a constructed language, see: https://djmarkdevlin.com. Ironically, since Mark wrote about this, serious scientists are now coming out with information that makes him right... well, half right. English is not constructed in the same way as the ones from JRR Tolkien's stories, but it was introduced to Britain as a second language adopted deliberately by Celtic-speaking people, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLpgVEfy4mQ. This event at Conway Hall had a friendly atmosphere, just like the 2011 BHA conference. Deborah asked at one point: "Is anybody here a believer in conspiracy theories?" and I raised my hand without hesitation. I felt no insecurity doing that because nobody there showed me any hostility. The only thing that disappointed me was that the cafe was cashless. Despite that I really enjoyed this day and I'm glad I went.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.
And: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2013/02/crop-circle-challenge-2013.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-rich-murder-and-wikileaks.html.
And: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2023/11/jfk-portal.html.

And just to prove Brent Lee really does exist and is not some MI5 deep fake, here he is!