A brief history of the creation and implementation of the weaponized labels "conspiracy theory/theorist"

[Taomeow]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created-phrase-conspiracy-theorists-and-ways-attack-anyone-who-challenge

 

https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory-invention-of-cia/

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-conspiracy-theory-label-powerful-tool-of-media-disinformation-and-political-discourse/5375968

Edited March 5, 2017 by Taomeow

[Aetherous]

The label is so dumb that I just tend to ignore it these days...I figure enough people are smart or intuitive enough at this point to see that it's just a weak tactic of manipulation.

[Taomeow]

The label is so dumb that I just tend to ignore it these days...I figure enough people are smart or intuitive enough at this point to see that it's just a weak tactic of manipulation.

 

To me anyone uttering the words "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorist" sounds like a well-trained parrot.  The other day I saw a video of a parrot who grew up with a dog and consequently barks.  It was an eye opener.  I realized that those who keep repeating like a sacred mantra this meaningless "conspiracy theory" sound (whose only meaning is to present irrefutable evidence of their indoctrination) grew up around malicious memes.  They didn't consciously choose this behavior, it's an involuntary reflex.

 

[blackstar212]

Yes history is good.

 

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/nope_it_was_always_already_wrong

 

 

A quick search of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) finds that the phrase had been used in May 1964:

 

New Statesman 1 May 694/2 Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed by the absence of a dogmatic introduction.

 

This is two years before Dispatch 1035-960 appeared. If you go to the magazine, you will find that this sentence appears in an unsigned editorial, “Separateness,” about the London Magazine’s recent transition from being an exclusively literary publication to a more interdisciplinary review of the arts.

 

So, no. The CIA did not invent the word “conspiracy theorist.” But this made me wonder how far back I could push the use of a term like “conspiracy theory.” Using the OED to date vocabulary is a dodgy proposition. The oldest example you are likely to find in an OED definition is unlikely to be the first time the word was used. It might not even be the first time that the word was written down. It just happens to be the oldest example that the dictionary’s lexicographers have found. Nonetheless, we’ll use the OED as a starting point and just be confident that the word has to be at least as old as the first example found there.

[Taoist Texts]

” But this made me wonder how far back I could push the use of a term like “conspiracy theory.”

google books Ngram says before 1880

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy+theory&year_start=1870&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cconspiracy%20theory%3B%2Cc0

Edited March 6, 2017 by Taoist Texts

[Taomeow]

Who said they invented the term?  Orwell's Newspeak was also English.

 

I said they invented "a weaponized label."  I.e. a way to reinterpret, implant and continuously reinforce the use of a particular word or word combination to mean something different from its original/neutral meaning and to acquire a new meaning designed to be used as a derogatory, dismissive, or incriminating label/marker.  

 

I know links are seldom read, but skimming through the first (not the best as intro to the subject goes but it was the first one to come up when I looked for that original 1967 dispatch) and then rushing into the arms of professional debunkers is not as useful a pursuit as trying to read them all and testing that trusty brain of yours for signs of spontaneous activity.   But it's hard to convince anyone to read any links, I agree.  However, there's a few people here who I think would positively flourish cognitively like spring crocuses if they did read the second and the third.  There's a lot of untapped human potential out there.  I was just trying to tap into that...

[Brian]

That's the approach I take to almost everything, TM. Drink from a firehose and then filter, differentiate and integrate. Makes it almost impossible to explain the patterns which emerge to those who don't take a similar approach but that's their loss.

[thelerner]

I always thought using the term conspiracy theorist was being polite.  There are very paranoid people out there who lives of fear, anger and obsession believing most things from water, air, food, government, vast segments of society as well as tiny secret segments are out to get them.. aliens too.  

 

They can be high IQ or low but are willing to believe extremist sites, build up long fantasies and connect virtually everything to there paranoid obsession du jour.  A small percentage of these 'true believers' turn violent.  The rest merely lead sadder lives, following websites that almost always claim apocalypse soon.. buy our stuff.

 

Course how do you tell a genuine conspiracy from fantasy?  Maybe you can't.  Yet getting information from sites that are extremist and historically play loose and apologetically with the truth is not good.   Reading unbiased history (there are real historians who dig deep and view all sides), preferably books and going beyond finding articles that back up your cognitive dissonances into studying both sides.  

 

I fear we now have a President who is a conspiracy theorist or simply knows how to play and manipulate that segment of our population. 

[Taomeow]

That's the approach I take to almost everything, TM. Drink from a firehose and then filter, differentiate and integrate. Makes it almost impossible to explain the patterns which emerge to those who don't take a similar approach but that's their loss.

 

Yes, that's the thing.  Almost impossible to explain.  I used to read lots of books on cognitive neuroscience, among other things in order to figure out how to explain a nonlinear process of pattern acquisition by methods of linear discourse (which is what human speech is), and discovered a lot of proof to the effect that it is, sadly, impossible. 

 

A classmate of mine was a very talented mathematician who always got near-failing grades in language/literature but won all the math, physics and chemistry competitions.  He was bullied something horrible by our resident bullies and had no idea how to defend himself, he had no linear discourse skills whatsoever.  His current job: pattern recognition, aka industrial espionage -- mega corporations hire him to spy on competition in the open, by arriving at conclusions as to what they are working on behind closed doors based on visible information.  Visible information does not reveal any of what's kept secret, but a pattern recognition pro can glean a picture and not just guess but know what's going on behind closed doors.  They pay him a helluva lot of money to do that.  To take "paranoid" guesses that is.  Because his "paranoid" guesses are so damn accurate that they give his employers a competing edge resulting in billions in profits.

 

Well, I process something else in this manner -- not what kind of new smartphone some corporation is up to concocting, but what kind of world is the world where this is happening alongside millions of other things happening all at once -- but the outcome is the same:  certainties about things invisible based on processing gazillions of visible ones and watching the pattern emerge. 

 

It is impossible to explain to people whose ability to use this most fruitful cognitive venue has not only never been developed but has been actively suppressed -- by bullying, by ridicule, by teaching them to fragment, disconnect, snip by snip by snip, instead of creating a hypersaturated solution of 'everything' and watching it suddenly crystallize...  suddenly whoosh...  and the pattern, the structure, is there -- rock solid, unimpeachable, 3D (or more D) model or reality. 

 

By the way, even if the subject matter is gruesome, this whoosh moment is always a thrill.  I experienced it for the first time in my life when I learned to read without anyone teaching me -- I was 3 -- pattern recognized! -- and I confess I've been addicted to that high ever since. 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Taomeow