We’re all familiar with the vague blanket accusation for any line of thought that questions the mainstream federal government narrative: “It’s a conspiracy theory!” The obvious faulty logic of this accusation has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, including in my 2016 video series, “Confronting Sophistry”.
All that being understood, what happens when the plot of the official media narrative perfectly fits the universally accepted definition of a “conspiracy theory”? Complete hypocrisy, of course, and the birth of a “mainstream conspiracy theory”; one that people commonly believe to be true, despite insufficient evidence.
Russia-gate Conspiracy
Let’s start with a relevant example from current events:
“Russian hackers/bots/facebook ads influenced the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump.”
What’s the source for this? Why of course, it’s none other than the friendly, honest, American and British Intelligence Agencies! This is a great conspiracy theory for the establishment to promote, because the “conspirators” are vaguely defined. All we know for sure, the Intelligence Agencies say, is that they are Russian.
Then the intelligence agencies released the supposed “smoking gun”, via their media liaison Buzzfeed. The infamous Steele dossier. This hilarious document adds detail to the speculative narrative but does not lend a single speck of credibility to it. It makes several grand claims about a connection between Trump and Russia/Putin, without any evidence except alleged hearsay from anonymous officials within the Russian FSB.
In other words, the dossier gives the mainstream tin foil hatters a narrative to cling to, one they can mindlessly parrot, despite the fact that it contains no verifiable evidence. There is verifiable evidence however, that the Steele dossier was funded by Trump’s political opponents, which you can find in this article from the Washington Post.
The ultimate effect of this dossier (created by a former MI6 officer) is to give people a lens to distort their view of current events. When viewed in the context of the claims made in the dossier, the seemingly insignificant June 2016 meeting between Trump’s advisers and a Russian lawyer becomes the linchpin connecting real life events with the surreal, amorphous, “Russian collusion” narrative.
The context for this meeting is provided by email exchanges released by Donald Trump Jr. between himself and (tabloid journalist) Rob Goldstone. The chain begins with an email from Goldstone to Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016 shown here in its entirety:
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:
Good morningEmin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the >Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with >Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. >Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
Best
Rob Goldstone
So we see the pretext of the meeting between Trump’s advisers and this Russian lawyer was to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton and her dealings with Russia. I would not be surprised if every single presidential candidate in American history was not somehow involved in trying to find skeletons in their opponents’ closet. This dirt-digging is part of the game of politics, and an affirmative reply to this email given by Trump Jr. does not necessarily incriminate him in any crime.
When ardent Hillary supporters see the email, they see confirmation of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump”, even though there is no proof to verify Goldstone’s claim. There’s only proof that he made the claim in this email, and we have no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth or what his own personal motivation might have been. Another quite telling part of the email is the reference to the “Crown prosecutor of Russia”, a non-existent position, which tells me it is possibly made up by Goldstone.
This headline and sub-header from the Atlantic admits that there is no crown prosecutor, and continues by saying “…but the man who holds the office’s nearest equivalent in Russia is a Putin loyalist of long standing.” Any journalist worth their salt knows that making such an assumption on behalf of Goldstone is intellectually dishonest. Every mainstream outlet repeated this assumption about who Goldstone meant to refer to when he said “crown prosecutor”, instead of doing what a journalist should do, and asking Goldstone for clarification on what he meant.
These hypocritical mainstream journalists want to continue to encourage you to believe the collusion conspiracy theory, even when the so-called “evidence” is inadmissible hearsay from a tabloid entertainment journalist.
An equally valid explanation for these events is that the Clinton campaign and/or the Obama administration were trying to trap the Trump campaign with the “bait and switch” method. They could have dangled the carrot of damaging information on Hillary in front of the Trump team to get them to agree to the meeting with the Russian lawyer, knowing they would later “expose” this meeting as evidence of the so-called Trump collusion with Russia.
Just to re-iterate, I find this explanation equally as plausible (if not slightly more so) as the explanation of actual Trump-Russia election collusion. The reason for this is that the media conglomerates and intelligence agencies (many times over revealed to be untrustworthy) are so obviously and transparently supporting a ridiculous confirmation bias, in favor of any evidence that might suggest a Trump-Russia connection.
“Confirmation bias” is something that hardcore skeptics accuse (sometimes rightfully) conspiracy theorists of having. It is when a person’s willingness to believe a certain narrative distorts their interpretation of current events. In the case of the Trump-Russia narrative, the establishment media’s confirmation bias is so obvious and “in your face”, it causes critically thinking people to suspect that the opposite is true. However, more information is necessary to reach a definitive conclusion either way.
9/11 Official Story is an Unproven Conspiracy Theory
Another past example of a mainstream conspiracy theory narrative is the official story promoted within the 9/11 Commission Report: 19 Saudi hijackers (with western intelligence connections) allegedly conspired with (former CIA asset) Osama Bin Laden to destroy the World Trade Centers in New York City by flying airplanes into them, without a single act of treason or negligence being committed by anyone within the US government. Not a single government employee was ever fired for failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks on US soil.
This official conspiracy theory has been contradicted from so many angles by so many different verifiable facts and details revealed over the past 16 years, that several books have been written on the subject. Here are some of the best ones:
- Black 9/11: Money, Motive and Technology by Mark H. Gaffney
- 9/11: The Big Lie by Thierry Meyssan
- The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin
The 9/11 mainstream conspiracy narrative distorted the American people’s perceptions so much, that we agreed to send our military to invade two middle eastern countries which the Bush administration was admittedly already looking for a justification to invade. Both countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, remain occupied by US forces today, now citing threats from the terrorist group known as ISIS.
Where Does #QAnon Fit in to This?
In the case of “Q”, the anonymous 8chan poster who claims to be someone inside the Trump administration with the highest security clearance, the narrative is vastly more complex. The most striking evidence provided by Q to prove his/her validity was a photo taken out the window of an airplane, posted on the message board at the exact time Air Force One was flying over that particular area.
The narrative of Q is essentially that Trump and his team of loyal patriots has been carrying out some type of sting operation that will finally bring rogue, treasonous factions within our government to justice. The Q narrative began after the mysterious Saudi purge, and it contains many diverse data points, making it much more complex than the Russia-gate narrative. The high amount of contextual details makes it feel more “believable”.
Another difference is that Q makes much more specific claims about individuals who are possibly culpable in criminal activity. These names include well-known politicians like Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton, but also high-powered corporate CEOs like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Eric Schmidt.
Like the Russia-gate conspiracy theory, the Q theory encourages people to view current events through the distorted lens of a narrative that has yet to be proven. Like the mainstream media does for left-leaning audiences, Q exploits the hopefulness of right-wing audiences to believe in an optimistic narrative, from their point of view.
As I said earlier, the mainstream information sources have been so obviously biased and fallacious in their claims about Trump-Russia conclusion, this causes people to suspect the Democrats are somehow involved. Some people go so far as to assume that the media bias proves the Democrats are involved. Luckily for Donald Trump, the Q narrative serves as the perfectly packaged counter-narrative for the people who make this assumption. Unfortunately these people have fallen for the “false dilemma” fallacy in making this assumption. I discussed this logical fallacy (as well as other logical fallacies) in detail in my Confronting Sophistry series.
Just because the mainstream media is dishonest in their bias toward the Russian collusion narrative, this does not automatically prove the validity of the Q narrative. It is possible that both narratives are false, and that would not surprise me at all. To its credit, the Q narrative does at least seem to have a more documented basis in factual events, rather than being a complete fabrication, like Russia-gate appears to be.
For example, it has long been suspected and documented (even by official sources) that the CIA (or a rogue element within it) is involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, murder, torture, blackmail and extortion for political ends. Also, the idea that North Korea is secretly a CIA puppet state had already been posited by alternative researchers before Q came along and offered data points that appear to be trying to confirm this.
Unfortunately, a lot of the silver linings of Q are overshadowed by his/her vested interest in making the Trump administration look good. For example, Trump’s approach to foreign policy so far is not a vast departure from his predecessors, except perhaps his style of rhetoric. The phony “War on Terror” continues unabated. Yet according to Q, President Trump is part of a group of God-loving “patriots” who are saving this country from the globalist cabal. So if he’s a savior, why is he continuing America’s military occupation of other countries under false pretenses? Why is he open and honest about expanding the powers of the dangerous military industrial complex (the one Eisenhower warned us about)?
Last Wednesday, when Q created an organized plan for his/her audience to post #QAnon #ReleaseTheMemo #GreatAwakening memes on Twitter, the mainstream media responded predictably: Russian bots and trolls did it. No actual new evidence or methodology of how they determined who is a “bot” or “troll”, just a repeat of the Russia-gate dossier mythology.
Where does that leave us? I say we still need more information before concluding that either of these narratives is true. I suspect both of them have elements of truth within them. However, I also suspect they are in some ways self-serving for those who created them, and that the actual truth is probably a lot…weirder, and more ambiguous…than either one of these mainstream conspiracy theories suggest.
Somewhere in my heart, I do hold out hope that justice will be brought to those who murdered Seth Rich, but I won’t let that hope cause me to believe ANY narrative before I have adequate proof of it.
Every narrative should be taken with a grain of salt until it can be verified, even if it appears to be an “anti-establishment” narrative on the surface. Claims from someone claiming to be a heroic “whistle-blower” or “leaker” should be looked at with the EXACT SAME amount of skepticism as an official source from within an intelligence agency. Any irrational imbalance of skepticism toward certain sources of information is evidence of confirmation bias.
Thousands of American lives have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because the American people bought into a false narrative before there was adequate evidence for it. Let’s not make that mistake again.