As conspiracy observers we are often asked how certain conspiracies could ever be "pulled off" without the majority of people noticing.
"You could never keep it a secret for all this time". "If that were true the news would be all over it." "A decision this big could never be hidden from the people." And most of all: "If that were true, it would mean that everybody is in on the conspiracy, it's impossible."
Oh really? I beg to differ.
Need to know basis
Many people seem to be of the opinion that conspiracies are impossible by definition, because "too many people would have stumbled upon it already if it were true". Often time this assertion goes hand in hand with certain assumptions we make on how society operates, certain modern clichees that have been fostered inside of us throughout our upbringing but that would not withstand further scrutiny.
One of the notions that I wish people would consider is the "need to know basis" that comes from military jargon. It's quite a simple mechanism that allows a secrecy structure to prevail, even and especially in the face of investigation and probing questions.
The need-to-know basis simply allows you to get a certain amount of information for your task at hand, but not more. Especially not more than you need to fulfill your function.
We'll go for a total Hollywood example here for the purpose of illustration:
Let's say you were a security guard, trained at a military base. You have guarded airplane hangars, laboratories and the main gates for decades on different bases and prisons operated by the military.
And this is about as much as you know about what you are guarding.
The operations inside the base are not part of your task, your task is simply to keep people out. And imagine you actually knew what went on inside - it would have great impact on your decision whether to continue doing your job. It may also endanger the continued operation of the facility due to increasing public criticism.
Say you knew that prisoners were tortured inside the base. Or you had seen some scientists work on some sci-fi looking stealth plane without an engine. Or you had overheard two laboratory assistants mention the new virus that is being created down in level 4.
As far as the employer is concerned: The less you know the better.
More knowledge would not only make you doubt your position, but it may greatly increase your likelihood of accidentally spilling the beans when pressured. Say some protesters are outside of the gate protesting alleged "prisoner mistreatment", asking you all sorts of incriminating questions. If you actually knew about the details you would be forced to lie about what you know in the face of public pressure - whereas not knowing would make your job really easy.
The military however loves the "neither confirm nor deny" approach. And this is where the need-to-know basis comes in, it's a form of "plausible deniability". If you really don't know what is going on inside you will not react to this critique or that assertion by people. You instead become a very useful pawn for those who call the shots, however nefarious their actual motivations may be.
Conspiracies survive because of compartmentalization
It's the same for any broader topic. Need to know.
Self-appointed "sceptics" may ask: "How do you propose the monetary system could be based on debt and interest that can never be repaid?! There are so many bankers in our society, some of them would have noticed!"
And I say: No they wouldn't have. It's not within their need-to-know basis.
The vast majority of bankers are supposed to be familiar with basic math, the products that the bank offers to its customers, and maybe with the internal accounting software. Knowing about the basis of the monetary system as the mathematical timebomb that it is would not only make a banker's job harder than it would have to be - it would also create longterm problems for the bank's public perception as more employees would eventually blurt out that inconvenient truth to their friends, families or concerned customers.
Nono, we want our employees to ignore all aspects about money creation and focus on selling those shiny new loans to more people.
If you want the bank to operate you want to make sure that your employees concentrate on what they need to simply do the job, not what could potentially empower them too much or endanger your evil empire ;)
We can apply the same train of thought to everything - whole fields of study, the public discourse about any topic, or even to full paradigms being peddled by large groups of people.
Nobody knows everything, and the continued functioning of institutions heavily relies on this mechanism or else it would fail due to the lack of public support and the glaring holes that can be found if one dared to dig a bit deeper.
Complicit through ignorance
So when we talk about a political conspiracy - doesn't mean all people of party A have to be aware of it. It's often enough that merely one or two people at the top are in the know, because then the other people working in that same group are guaranteed to be exceptionally convincing in how they come across, simply because they think they know the truth when they actually don't know squat.
The need-to-know basis itself is often so unrecognized that a lot of people actually think they know everything there is to know about what they are doing. Especially in academic fields where people pry themselves on being intelligent, there is ample danger to have become a pawn for an overarching agenda that might have gone completely unnoticed due to the amount of superficial information that builds on unanimously-acxcepted assumptions.
The need-to-know basis then acts as one of the main tools for ensuring the divide in the public and the neverending back and forth of opposing ideological camps within the public realm. Because all participants act on their limited knowledge thnking it to be the whole story when in actuality it is nothing but a "useful-idiot template" they are playing out unwittingly, completely in line with their intended purpose from a controller's perspective.
Whenever you talk to anyone, consider their unrecognized need-to-know basis and try to gauge where that individual simply trusts his assumptions rather than digging deeper to double check his truth. If all bankers knew about the slavery aspects of the modern monetary system - they wouldn't be bankers any longer. If all doctors knew about the hazardous effects of chemotherapy they wouldn't be doctors.
It doesn't mean that all bankers or all doctors are actively helping the conspiracy thrive to enslave people. It just means that their limited understanding - guaranteed through the need-to-know basis - is enough to keep any conspiracy going, without their knowledge. Even the largest and farthest-reaching conspiracies do not require to be known by most people who are actively participating in them daily - they require the opposite - secrecy.
Obedience is hard when people are asked to act against their conscience. And without any deeper knowledge, even the most nefarious conspiracies can be explained away. Not merely by those who originally envisioned them, but especially by those guarding and protecting them every day because they have not considered the missing 95% of the actual story.
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