On Conspiracies

The word conspiracy means to plot in secret, often to harm others. Companies, political parties, and other organizations regularly do it. We aren't invited to their meetings. Yet we are subtly urged not to use the word conspiracy to describe such activities.

During just wars, just groups have good reasons for plotting in secret. Some other groups also have justifiable reasons for plotting in secret.

The phrase conspiracy theory is a combination straw person and circumstantial ad hominem attack used to dismiss opponents and treat them as mentally unhealthy. The phrase is used equivocally, meaning crazy, preposterous or a secret plot (or all three), often by establishments to associate critics with those who believe in alien abductions or other preposterous ideas. Calling alien abductions a conspiracy theory has little ethical importance. But the conspiracy theory phrase is a big deal when used to demonize well-reasoned political criticism.

Today, many facts get treated by establishments as "conspiracy theories." To name a few:

1. Marxian states failed to return some allied POWs.
2. Cultural Marxism not only exists, it is the major form of Marxism, with 71 percent of college freshmen opposing speech freedoms, but not their own speech freedoms, of course.
3. Fast jihad is Islamic and is done by Muslims.
4. We live in an intellectual climate far worse than McCarthyism. (The linked list is a fraction of those punished or threatened with punishment.)
5. Nonwhites have worse ethnoracial behavior than whites and their behavior gets worse when their numbers increase.
6. Words have more than one meaning: Jihad means both inner struggle and anti-Infidel totalitarianism, though the former meaning is used for equivocation to fool infidels.

Conspiracy matters are riddled with ironic contradictions. Writers pointing out plots by establishments get slurred as conspiracy theorists by establishment writers whose opinions are, in fact, preposterous.