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Conspiracy Theories Test Flashcards

1
Q

Define Conspiracy

A

Two or more
individuals acting together for a
desired outcome

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2
Q

Parts of a conspiracy Theory

A
  1. Event
    * Large-scale or historically significant
    *Often spectacular or shocking
  2. Explanation
    * Must be conspiracy based
    * Secret or powerful group of conspirators (Often hated or demonized groups)
    *Seeks to answer unanswered questions
  3. Goal
    * The plan or Control (Global domination or new world order)
    *Evidence of foreknowledge on the event
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3
Q

What do you need to prove a conspiracy theory?

A

EVIDENCE!

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4
Q

What is Cui Bono?

A

Cui bono is asking or discovering who benefits (this is a logical fallacy)

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5
Q

What is Manichaeanism?

A

Conspiracy theorists tend to see the
absolute forces of evil against the absolute forces of good.

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6
Q

What is apocalypticism?

A

Conspiracy theorists tend to see the plot coming to a final conclusion where good will triumph ?

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7
Q

What is “Just asking questions”?

A
  • As if all questions are valid
  • Or as if certain question being unanswered (or unanswerable) leads to a specific conclusion
  • A distraction from the flaws in the conspiracy theory
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8
Q

What are Non-falsifiable claims?

A

These are claims that cannot be refuted. ( Ex. God placed dinosaur
remains in the Earth to
test our faith)

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9
Q

What is “Prove me Wrong” ?

A
  • Shifting the burden of
    proof from them to you
    *Burden of Proof logical
    fallacy
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10
Q

History of Conspiracy Theories Pt.1

A

Nero and the Fire of Rome- Nero was accused of secretly being behind the Great Fire of Rome; Nero, in turn, blamed Christians for secretly being behind the fire. He started to Persecute Christians again.

The Knights Templar- The struggle between the Christian Church and the kings of medieval Europe
during the Crusades inspired conspiracies. such as that the Knights Templar were in league with Satan and practicing sodomy, pederasty, and sorcery; or that various Popes were secretly the Anti-Christ.

The French Revolution
* Enlightenment rationalism and opposition to the abuses of the Church
* Augustin Barruel and John Robison
* Illuminati and Freemasons-Short lived society founded by Adam Weishaupt
* Adam Weishaupt- Founder of illuminati. He founded this group in order to promote Enlightenment principles of rationalism. He believed in Reason and Science over religion.

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11
Q

History of Conspiracy Theories Pt. 2

A

American Conspiracy Theories
* Freemasons, the Illuminati, Catholics, Jews
* The Federal Government
* The FBI, the Federal Reserve, World War I and the draft, the New Deal
* FDR foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor
* Joseph McCarthy fighting communists in the US government
* The John Birch Society resisting international organizations plotting global domination

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12
Q

History of Conspiracy Theories Pt. 3

A

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories
* Jewish citizenship rights in the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe
* Participation in worship and in wars
* “Christ-killers,” blood libel, sorcerers, host desecrators, poisoners of wells,
murderers of children
* As the only money-lenders, hated by those who borrow, close to those in power
* Forced deportations and pogroms
* German and Russian anti-Semitic propaganda
* Zionism
* Search for a new homeland
* Putting the goals of Israel ahead of all others

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13
Q

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

A

Supposedly the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders explaining
their plan for world domination through the imposition of
socialism/communism
* Popularized by Sergei Nilus
* Plagiarized from the novel Biarritz and Dialogues in Hell between
Montesquieu and Machiavelli
* Henry Ford promoted the Protocols in the United States in the
Dearborn Independent, collected as The International Jew: The
World’s Foremost Problem
* “Even if they are not real, they seem real.”

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14
Q

The Text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

A

The aim of the supposed Jewish conspiracy is to create chaos in Europe so that the people will in desperation turn to socialism through which the Jews would control the world
* Control the economy
* Control education
* Crypto-Jews
* Endless wars
* Instill blind confidence in science
* Control the Press and the Media
* Undermine Christianity and the divine right of kings
* Institute mob rule
* Kill opponents
* Mesianism- the arrival of a person, “anointed”by God to lead all the people in the “World to Come”

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15
Q

Suspicious Minds Introduction

A

*The human mind craves order, but the world is chaos
* A conspiracy theory allows our minds to see order where there is only chaos

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16
Q

Violent Conspiracy Theorists

A

*Adolf Hitler, The Holocaust and World War II
* Anders Breivik, Norway summer camp, Islamic
conspiracy
* Tamerlan Tsarnev, Boston Marathon Bomber,
The Protocols
* Jared Loughner, Gabby Giffords shooter, mind
control
* Wenneker von Brunn, Holocaust Memorial
Museum shooter
* Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber, gun
confiscation

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17
Q

Non-Violent Conspiracy Theorists

A

*Andrew Wakefield, MMR vaccine and autism
* Vaccine resistance
* Contrary to God’s plan
* Doctors want to kill babies
* Vaccines are poison
* Target a minority population
* Just a way for Big Pharma to make money

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18
Q

What is bothsiderism?

A

Media affirming valid ideas on bot sides

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19
Q

Conspiracy Theory Tropes

A

*Protecting the children
*Anti-Semitism

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20
Q

False Flag

A

*The term originally referred to ships
displaying a flag other than that of their true country of origin
* Now when a country organizes an attack against its own citizens and makes it look like someone else did it.

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21
Q

Summary definition of a conspiracy theory

A
  • Some supposedly unanswered question
  • Nothing is as it seems
  • Amazingly competent plotters
  • Who are pure evil
  • A plot which can be uncovered through anomaly
    hunting
  • And which is un-refutable
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22
Q

What is anomaly hunting?

A

Conspiracy look for something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected to prove theories.

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23
Q

Contrary Evidence and Lack of Evidence

A

Both ways conspiracy theorists try to prove their theories. Things considered un-refutable (Unable to disprove)

24
Q

False Flag Operations

A

*An event orchestrated by conspirators to make their
enemies look bad but didn’t really happen or didn’t happen
the way it had been made to appear
* The people supposedly affected by or involved in the event
are actors (“crisis actors”) paid to participate
* Or people are drugged or brainwashed or programmed to
act in ways to benefit the conspirators
* Several deadly shootings have been accused by
conspiracy theorists as being false-flag operations by
people like Alex Jones, including the Boston Marathon
bombing and the Sandy Hook murders of children
* These shootings are often said by conspiracy theorists
to be staged with the intent of taking away citizens’
guns

25
Q

What is “Schrödinger’s Cat”?

A
  • The notion that if a cat is in a box, can’t be seen, and may
    have been exposed to a deadly toxin, may be considered
    both dead and alive at the same time
  • In conspiracy theories, the notion that two contradictory
    things may both be true at the same time ( Believing in two conspiracy theories that directly contradict each other)
  • Osama Bin Laden wasn’t killed on the order of Pres.
    Obama, but died years earlier of complications from
    diabetes AND is still alive and living in custody
  • HIV doesn’t exist AND HIV is a plot by Western
    culture to wipe out African culture
  • Believing in A conspiracy theory makes you likely to entertain ANY conspiracy theory, even two that directly contradict each other
26
Q

Conspiracy Theorists…

A
  • Start from their existing ideology
  • Create conspiracy theories even before there is an official story
  • Will buy-in to a made-up conspiracy
  • Believe two conspiracy theories that contradict each other
  • Refuse to listen to debunking…because the debunking is part of the conspiracy
27
Q

What is Brave New Word by Aldous Huxley?

A
  • The government ensures that
    its citizens never question the
    system by brainwashing them
    with subliminal messages
    encouraging unthinking
    conformity and addiction to a
    mind-numbing drug
  • People are just supposed to
    work, consume, and die
28
Q

Julian Huxley

A
  • The Tissue-Culture King” about a
    biologist who discovers the secret
    of telepathy but to protect himself
    from counter-attacks fashions a
    hat of metal foil
  • Since then, “tin foil hatters” have
    used them to prevent mind-control
    efforts by the government, spies,
    mobsters, corporations, people
    with ESP, and aliens
29
Q

What is Richard Hoftstadter’s “The Paranoid style in American Politics”?

A

The beginning of academic consideration of conspiracy theories.

30
Q

The paranoid style 2

A

The less people trust, are satisfied with their lives, the more powerless
they feel, the more likely they are to buy into conspiracy theories.

31
Q

What is the Deep State?

A

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

32
Q

Compensatory control

A

*When we can’t be in control ourselves, we believe someone else is
* God – “Everything happens for a reason” or “God has a plan for me”
* The government – for good or evil
* A powerful enemy – better an enemy than chaos

33
Q

What is Prudent Paranoia?

A
  • Mild paranoia is common among entirely ordinary people
  • Being on your guard can be a highly intelligent and appropriate strategy
  • But we tend to err on the side of being suspicious
  • We’re so good at spotting ulterior motives that we sometimes see them behind innocent
    behavior
34
Q

What is The Tuskegee Study of Untreated
Syphilis in the Negro Male?

A

*The subjects were told that
they were being treated for
“bad blood”
* Started when there was no
treatment for syphilis
* But treatment withheld even
once there was treatment
and the study continued for
decades until a whistleblower
alerted the press

35
Q

The Bilderberg Group

A

A forum for discussing the major issues facing the world
* But according to conspiracy theorists, they aren’t discussing, they are deciding
* The next recession
* The next terrorist attack
* The next war
* Toward a single globalist government
* The New World Order
* The assassinations of JFK, RFK, Lincoln; global warming; vaccines;
pollution; food additives; chem-trails; child abuse; the Black Death;
the British royal family

36
Q

Occam’s razor

A

If you CAN
explain something simply, DON’T
do it more complicatedly

37
Q

What does openness have to do with conspiracy theories?

A
  • The higher someone scores in openness, the more likely he or she is to believe conspiracy theories
  • Openness includes being imaginative, adventurous, emotionally aware, intellectually curious, and appreciative of the arts
  • People who believe homeopathy, psychic abilities, ghosts, superstitions, New Age spiritualism, and/or urban legends are more likely to believe conspiracy theories
38
Q

What is Cultic Milieu?

A

The intellectual underground where
all manner of weird and wonderful
ideas flourish

39
Q

What are the Unknown Unknowns?

A

*There are things we know
we know; there are things
we know we don’t know;
but there are things we
don’t know we don’t know”
* We don’t realize what we
don’t know
* And our brains tend to fill in
the blanks

40
Q

What is Jenny McCarthy and autism?

A

*She literally diagnosed the cause of her son Evan’s autism by googling “autism”
* When confronted with the actual scientific evidence she responded by saying, “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”

41
Q

What is Christine Maggiore and
AIDS?

A
  • She determined that AIDS is not caused by HIV but by drug use, anal sex, or the drugs used to treat AIDS
  • She said, “I am living in perfect health without AIDS medicines…I urge all of you to question what you have been told about HIV and AIDS
  • When she became pregnant, she took no medicine to prevent the transmission of HIV to her daughter
  • Her daughter died before age 4 and
    Maggiore died of opportunistic infections common to people with AIDS
42
Q

David Icke & the Archons

A

*Received psychic messages that revealed that the world is secretly ruled by an evil race of
interdimensional reptiles called Archons
Originally, humans lived without war, famine,
or pollution
* Then the Archons took control
* In order to create fear, confusion, and hatred, every negative event - every war, recession, natural disaster, and terrorist attack – is engineered by men (or reptilian/human hybrids) acting as puppets of the alien Archons.
*The Archons feed off human fear and hatred and instead of living in the original paradise we are trapped in a virtual reality prison of a universe they created (which is really a
hologram)
* When the plans of the Archons are completely exposed their control over us will be broken and they will be defeated.

43
Q

What is “The hero’s journey”?

A

“The hero’s journey”
* Leaving home, guided (supernatural), death and rebirth, conquest of monster
(fatal flaw), return home a hero
* “Overcoming the monster”

44
Q

What is empathy/sympathy for underdogs?

A

*Studies have shown that we tend to
sympathize with the underdog
* This advantages the conspiracy theorist who presents himself as the unlikely hero, completely over-powered, but identifying and
ultimately defeating the monstrous evil that is the conspiracy
* Claiming unfair disadvantage, therefore, is par for the course with conspiracy theorists

45
Q

What is the appeal of pure evil?

A

Ex: The Joker, Voldemort
*They are driven purely by greed,
self-interest, cruelty, cunning,
ruthlessness, and egotism
* We have an irresistible
compulsion to sort people into
just two categories: good or evil

46
Q

What is The Umbrella Man?

A
  • A man carried an umbrella on
    Dealey Plaza on the day JFK was
    assassinated
  • He appears to have opened it
    just before JFK was shot and
    closed it right after
  • Witnesses said he opened the
    umbrella and held it
    conspicuously aloft, thrusting it
    up and down and spinning it
    around
47
Q

What do Conspiracy Theorists often do?

A

*Weaving unrelated and inexplicable anomalies together
* Refusing to see things that are there; seeing things that aren’t there
* Finding meaningful patterns that are not there
* Denying coincidence
* Two things can be true and also unrelated

48
Q

What is the Heider-Simmel experiment?

A

Our intention detector only
needs the slightest
suggestion of deliberate
movement to see intention

49
Q

What is Intentionally Bias?

A

In fact, our intention detector assumes everything
that happens happens because someone intended it.
*Alcohol can diminish our
ability to detect a lack of
intention
* The need for a speedy
decision can also inhibit our
ability to determine lack of
intention

50
Q

What is projection?

A

Trying to understand another’s
intention by supposing you were the
other person

51
Q

What is False Consensus?

A

The illusion that most people are probably thinking what we’re thinking

52
Q

What is Proportionality Bias?

A

We want the magnitude of an event to match the magnitude of whatever caused it; i.e., big events have big causes

53
Q

What is the Butterfly Effect?

A

Small things can
have big consequences

54
Q

What is Conformation Bias?

A

*First, we collect facts
Then we come to a rational conclusion
* But the reality is that our brains often work in reverse
* The conclusion comes first, then our brain seeks out the evidence to fit what
we already believe

55
Q

What is Biased Assimilation?

A

We interpret ambiguous events in light of
what we already believe

56
Q

What is the backfire effect?

A

Showing people the facts can often make them even more confident of their misunderstandings

57
Q

Suspicious minds Epilogue

A

*Even the smarter and more educated are susceptible to confirmation
bias and conspiracy-thinking
*We all deal with the chaos of the universe by trying to see order
where there isn’t any
* It is this impulse to see order that makes us susceptible to conspiracy-
thinking
*And we need to overcome this hard-wiring of our brain to do
effective research

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