We the Sheeple? Why Conspiracy Theories Persist

From TCS Daily: We the Sheeple? Why Conspiracy Theories Persist is a very good (if somewhat polemic) article by Edward Feser. He links the persistence of conspiracy theories to Enlightenment disdain for both authority and common sense.

Conspiracy theorists allege that the events of 9/11 are not adequately explained by the "official story" fingering Osama bin Laden and his network as the culprits. What really needs explaining, though, is not 9/11, but the existence of such conspiracy theorists themselves, whose by now well-known speculations about what "really happened" that day are – not to put too fine a point on it – so mind-numbingly stupid that it is mystifying how anyone with a functioning cerebrum could take them seriously even for a moment.

The problems with such theories have been pretty thoroughly exposed by now. Here is just a sample: If the aim of the conspirators was to motivate the American people to go to war, why wouldn't the crashing of airplanes into the World Trade Center suffice? What was the point of secretly placing explosives throughout the towers – no small task – and thereby risking exposure? If the government was really willing and able to orchestrate such a massive conspiracy here at home, why couldn't or wouldn't it also carry out the far easier task of planting evidence of WMD in faraway Iraq? If the cell phone calls made from the hijacked planes were faked, how did the government find people capable of so perfectly mimicking the voices of the victims, and how did they acquire the detailed knowledge of their personal lives that would enable the hoaxers to deceive so many of the victims' loved ones and friends? If it was really a cruise missile that hit the Pentagon, why do so many eyewitnesses report having seen an airplane crashing into it? If it was also really a missile, and not an airplane, that crashed in Pennsylvania, then why did eyewitnesses report seeing an airplane in that case too? And what really happened to the airplanes in question and their passengers? If even a third rate burglary like the one committed at the Watergate hotel couldn't be kept secret, why hasn't someone, anyone involved in this massive plot, or with knowledge of those who were involved, come forward to reveal what he knows? And so on and on.

Of course, conspiracy theorists have tried to provide answers to some of these difficulties for their case, but the "answers" are even more ridiculously far-fetched and unfounded than the original theories themselves. Nor do they have any good answer to the central problem with all 9/11 conspiracy theories, which is this: Everything that happened that day has a ready explanation in terms of bin Ladenist aggression together with two implacable forces of nature: government incompetence and the laws of physics. (Check out the recent book Debunking 9/11 Myths, or this useful website, if you really have any doubts.) There is simply no need to posit a government conspiracy in order to explain the evidence. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theories themselves face all sorts of difficulties, as we have seen. So why even bother with them in the first place? Haven't these people (a few of whom are philosophy professors and scientists) ever heard of Occam's razor? Haven't the less learned among them – mouth-breathers of the sort who, while they could never understand a word of Noam Chomsky's serious scientific and philosophical work, still think he's "cool" and enjoy reading about him in the liner notes of Rage Against the Machine albums – at least seen this?

The standard view of pop psychologists is that the reason people are attracted to conspiracy theories is that such theories provide reassurance that catastrophic events never happen for trivial reasons. Hence (it is said) the reason so many people think Oswald didn't act alone in the Kennedy assassination is that they just don't want to believe that JFK was murdered by some lone nutcase; it had to be part of something bigger and more meaningful. Similarly, we are told, 9/11 conspiracy theorists are just sensitive souls who can't face the awful truth that a guy in a cave somewhere was able to bring down the twin towers and set the Pentagon ablaze.

I think this sort of explanation is, in the present case anyway, pretty obviously false. Al-Qaeda, not to mention the global Islamist movement of which it is a part, is far more than a guy in a cave. It is (or at any rate was in 2001, before being seriously degraded by American military action and anti-terrorism measures) a vast and well-funded international network led by intelligent and sinister ideologues with a flair for the dramatic, and who see themselves as part of a centuries-old jihadist tradition. If you want a grand conspiracy led by James-Bond-movie-style bad guys, look no further. And yet the 9/11 conspiracy theorists will hear none of it. The reason they reject the "official story," then, cannot be because they'd rather believe that something big was behind 9/11, because the "official story" just is that something big was behind 9/11.

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I would suggest, then, that the post-Enlightenment pretense of hostility to authority, tradition, and common sense as such, and especially the extreme form of it represented by the likes of Marx and Nietzsche, is what really underlies the popularity of conspiracy theories, particularly those involving 9/11. The absurd idea that to be intelligent, scientific, and intellectually honest requires a distrust for all authority per se and a contempt for the opinions of the average person, has so deeply permeated the modern Western consciousness that conspiratorial thinking has for many people come to seem the rational default position. And it also explains why even mainstream outlets like Time and Vanity Fair, while by no means endorsing the views of the conspiracy theorists, have tended to treat them with kid gloves, as if they were harmless and well-meaning eccentrics instead of shrill and hate-filled crackpots. The belief that extremism in the attack on authority is no vice has a powerful appeal even for suit-wearing journalists and media executives (especially if they are liberals), even if they have too much sense to follow it out consistently.

Yet no civilization can be healthy which nurtures such delusions, for they strike at the very heart of a society's core institutions – family, religion, schools, political institutions, and so forth – and replace the (sometimes critical) allegiance we should feel for them with a corrosive skepticism. Conspiracy theories are only the most extreme symptom of this disease. Less dramatic, but in the long run more dangerous, is the relentless tendency of the Western intelligentsia to denigrate the Western past and present, massively exaggerating the vices of their own civilization and the virtues of its competitors, and putting the worst possible spin on the motives and policies of its current leaders while minimizing or excusing the crimes of its enemies. This would be dangerous under the best of circumstances. It is doubly so while we are at war with enemies who know no such self-doubt and self-hatred.