12 logical fallacies unmasked in the use of the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist"
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.” – Leo Tolstoy
“People can be extremely intelligent, have taken a critical thinking course, and know logic inside and out. Yet they may just become clever debaters, not critical thinkers, because they are unwilling to look at their own biases.” – Carole Wade
The terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" are two of the most effective propaganda weapons ever devised. Unsurprisingly, though, subjecting their use to scrutiny exposes at least 12 logical fallacies.
The authorities decide which events are conspiracies - the Appeal to Authority fallacy
Only the majority expert voice counts, the minority expert voice is to be derided and ignored - the Appeal to Common Belief fallacy
Professionals do not make claims of conspiracy nor do they theorise - the Strawman fallacy
Refuters use the more specific and appropriate term, “psychological operation” or psyop - the Definist fallacy
Selecting the obviously invalid argument - the Cherry-picking fallacy
OMG! You’re one of those tinfoil-hatted people! - Argument from Intimidation fallacy
Your reasoning is based on bias, mine is rational - The Bias Blind Spot
Is the fact of conspiracy the main concern? - no, it’s the Big Lie fallacy technique used for millennia to control our minds
The sophisticated Big Lie - the addition of the False Dilemma fallacy
If those in power had done it they would have … - Hypothesis contrary to fact
That’s insane, that cannot be true - Argument from incredulity
When the rule is that they must “tell” us the truth underneath the propaganda how is the rejection of the narrative in the realm of “theory”? - The Loaded Question fallacy
1. The authorities decide which events are conspiracies - the Appeal to Authority fallacy
Appeal to Authority fallacy - Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered.
No one is denying that conspiracies occur, of course, but only events recognised by the authorities as conspiracies - a risibly miniscule number - really are conspiracies; all other claims are based purely in the realm of theory and lack the evidence to prove them. That’s the dogma anyway. Real conspiracies are acknowledged in this mainstream article, 9 huge government conspiracies that actually happened, although the evidence shows that conspiracies 2, 3, 5 and 7 are not represented accurately:
2. The US Public Health Service lied about treating black men with syphilis for more than 40 years - Dr Sam Bailey’s study of the allegedly distinct and infectious illness, syphilis, shows that various experimental projects on syphilis including Tuskegee did not follow the scientific method and that scientists engaged in the logical fallacy of circular reasoning common in experiments based on germ theory, that is, they based their experiments on unscientifically determined claims only to supposedly prove new claims with further unscientific work. Highly recommended viewing, also recommended is Mike Stone’s article, Koch’s Postulates and the Great Asymptomatic Escape which includes discussion of syphilis.
3. More than 100 million Americans received a polio vaccine contaminated with a potentially cancer-causing virus - The problem at the outset is that the alleged infectious illness, polio, has never been proven to exist, the corollary of which is that the alleged vaccine against it is a phantom. See various articles on the polio fraud by Mike Stone and Dr Sam Bailey’s interview with polio researcher of many years, Jim West, who shows that many cases of the alleged infectious illness of polio were caused by toxic pesticides including DDT and lead arsenates.
5. Military leaders reportedly planned terrorist attacks in the US to drum up support for a war against Cuba - Operation Northwoods, the infamous purported false-flag proposal devised in 1962 to pretend an attack by Cuba in order to provide pretext for the US to invade Cuba which was rejected by the President, JFK, is not what it seems. Do we really think the military would declassify such an incriminating document? For what purpose? A propagandistic one, of course! See Operation Northwoods: false-flag proposal or a case of Who's on First? Fabrication of documents by intelligence services for various purposes has certainly been done and - being such an effective propaganda weapon - is only to be expected (see Pentagon “Leaks”: 5 ways to tell REAL from FAKE and Chelsea Manning, agent; Collateral Murder, faked).
7. In 1974, the CIA secretly resurfaced a sunken Soviet submarine with three nuclear-armed ballistic missiles - What nuclear-armed ballistic missiles? The evidence shows that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed using conventional bombing techniques (Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s destruction profiles are identical to Tokyo’s, an admitted fire-bombing). Multiple channels of evidence show nuclear weapons to be a hoax … that all powers seem happy to play their role in.
While we are told the “real” Watergate conspiracy isn’t the conspiracy initially reported, former NYPD detective, James Rothstein, claims a different “real” conspiracy: that the break-in was based on paedophile records. Will the “real” Watergate conspiracy please stand up!
Anyone who doesn’t recognise that power likes to control information and to that end will push out multiple streams of propaganda to bamboozle and mislead really is willfully naïve.
2. Only the majority expert voice counts, the minority expert voice is to be derided and ignored - the Appeal to Common Belief fallacy
Appeal to Common Belief fallacy - When the claim that most or many people in general or of a particular group accept a belief as true is presented as evidence for the claim. Accepting another person’s belief, or many people’s beliefs, without demanding evidence as to why that person accepts the belief, is lazy thinking and a dangerous way to accept information.
Throughout history individuals and groups who have dissented from the religious dogma of their time and place (known as “heretics”) have been reviled, ignored or worse. Only later was the truth of what they said and/or their shameful treatment recognised. In contemporary times, instead of showing we have learned from this illogical and unfair treatment, we repeat it with seemingly willful obstinacy. People hitherto recognised as eminent in their field or otherwise highly-respected will suddenly transmogrify into “conspiracy theorists” and “mis/dis-information agents” when they challenge the current dogma. “Science” is the new cannot-be-questioned religion. There is “the science” determined by the authorities and “misinformation” put forward by those who challenge “the science”. Ironically, a fundamental element of science is, in fact, questioning and challenge - questioning and challenging have always happened in the scientific process - but somehow in current times the questioning or challenging of “science” is vilified and suppressed massively.
Of course, a person’s challenging of the dogma regardless of their credentials doesn’t automatically mean they’re correct, the problem is in the silencing and dismissal of their voices.
A number of scientists, health professionals including medical doctors and independent researchers have made cases against all the various elements in the covid pandemic narrative with views on a continuum from:
no virus has ever been proven to exist using the scientific method including sars-cov-2 and the sciences of both virology and vaccinology are fraudulent to …
there’s an illness but the mandated interventions including the alleged vaccines offer no benefit only risk
Note: The claims of the alleged sciences of both virology and vaccinology based on Pasteur’s germ “theory” have been dogged by refutation from eminent doctors and scientists since the second-half of the nineteenth century; the perpetuation of the idea that so-called anti-vaxxers comprise misguided, ignorant people who hold exaggerated beliefs about the safety and efficacy of the so-called vaccines is pure propaganda.
See also 5 Huge Historical Vaccine Frauds - How the Establishment Hijacked Vaccine History.
3. Professionals do not make claims of conspiracy nor do they theorise - the Strawman fallacy
Strawman fallacy - Substituting a person’s actual position or argument with a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of the position of the argument.
When Fire Protection Engineers such as Scott Grainger and Ed Munyak say respectively:
”Steel structural frame buildings, high-rise buildings, simply do not collapse due to fire. There has never been until 9/11 an experience where there was a high-rise building that was steel frame completely collapsed,”
“I became fascinated with the government’s version of the events on 9/11 because this was totally contrary to anything I’d ever experienced either working in the field of fire safety or knowing what I know about mechanical engineering. It defies many fundamentals of mechanics and materials and physics and just many fundamental engineering concepts,”
where’s the claim of conspiracy and where’s the theory?
A number of other professionals signed onto Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth have also given their opinions on the explanations for the destructions of the three buildings on 9/11, including:
Tom Sullivan - Explosives Loader; Casey Pfeiffer - Structural Engineer; Ron Brookman - Structural Engineer; Steven Dusterwald - Structural Engineer; David Topete - Civil and Structural Engineer; Kamal Obeid - Civil and Structural Engineer; Robert McCoy - Architect; Les Young - Architect; Stephen Barasch - Architect; Kathy McGrade - Metallurgical Engineer; Niels Harrit - Chemist; Jerry Lobdill - Chemical Engineer and Physicist; Mark Basile - Chemical Engineer; Tony Szamboti - Mechanical Engineer; Richard Humenn - Chief Electrical Design Engineer; Lt Col Robert Bowman - Aeronautical and Nuclear Engineer; Robert Podolski - Physicist and Engineer.
Film: 9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts speak out (58m)
While some of these professionals may make claims of criminality, in general they simply present evaluations based on their professional experience and expertise with no allusion to conspiracy.
So who’s calling conspiracy? Is it YOU perhaps, are you the one calling conspiracy! rather than the expert putting forward an opinion based on their relevant professional expertise.
A great deal put forward refuting official stories makes no mention of conspiracy and in some cases those putting forward their case may not even think a conspiracy has occurred. That being the case where is the legitimacy in applying the term “conspiracy theory”?
Calling “conspiracy theory” is misnaming the nature of the argument. The argument is that explanations given by government/media are not consistent with reality and/or are internally inconsistent, not that a conspiracy has occurred or if the claim of conspiracy is made, it is only made secondary to the primary refutation of the explanation. It is up to the person evaluating the material to decide whether it successfully refutes the explanation and if it does, whether a conspiracy has occurred or not.
While some of the experts criticising the covid narrative do indeed call out loud and clear a conspiracy has occurred - see former top respiratory scientist at Pfizer, Dr Michael Yeadon, speaking at a rally in Trafalgar Square (May 2023) - they back their claims with an argument coming from their expertise and years of experience.
4. Refuters use the more specific and appropriate term, “psychological operation” or psyop - the Definist fallacy
Definist fallacy - Occurs whenever the definition of a term, word, or concept is used in a way that hinders reason or communication.
The vast majority of event narratives whose refutations elicit the label “conspiracy theory” are of a very specific type that those refuters - who do not take the strictly “straight bat” approach of professionals viewing the event through a more technical or scientific lens - recognise as “psychological operations” or psyops. For the anti-conspiracists though psyops aren’t even a thing, psyops have not been incorporated into their paradigm of how the world works! They simply don’t happen despite the history of them dating from at least Roman Emperor, Diocletian, staging fires and blaming them on the Christians and later The Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and The Great Fire of London in 1666 whose false explanations persist hundreds of years later.
The quintessential fictional psyop is the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes with Hans Christian Andersen’s version being the most well-known.
[They] let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colors and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.
…
So the honest old minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working away at their empty looms.
"Heaven help me," he thought as his eyes flew wide open, "I can't see anything at all". But he did not say so.
Both the swindlers begged him to be so kind as to come near to approve the excellent pattern, the beautiful colors. They pointed to the empty looms, and the poor old minister stared as hard as he dared. He couldn't see anything, because there was nothing to see. "Heaven have mercy," he thought. "Can it be that I'm a fool? I'd have never guessed it, and not a soul must know. Am I unfit to be the minister? It would never do to let on that I can't see the cloth."
"Don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it," said one of the weavers.
"Oh, it's beautiful - it's enchanting." The old minister peered through his spectacles. "Such a pattern, what colors!" I'll be sure to tell the Emperor how delighted I am with it."
The fable shows that making people believe things doesn’t require a semblance of reality and that propaganda has a certain magical quality that seduces people into believing claims even when what they see with their own eyes belies them. In the fable, the weavers engage in some pre-emptive gaslighting by stating that the magnificent clothes will become invisible to people “unfit for their office” or “unusually stupid” where now we are gaslit (by both the perpetrators and their enablers) with the epithets “conspiracy theorist” and similar.
I’m not sure what real example serves as the quintessential psyop but I can think of no better than the collapse of WTC-7, the third tower - unhit by a plane - to come down on 9/11, by “fire”.
Structural engineer, Ron Brookman (my emphasis):
“When I first looked at the films of Tower 7, I automatically assumed and concluded - pretty close, quickly - that it was a controlled demolition. I didn't think it was worth a lot of extra effort to dig into the various details of the building in order to refute that.”
What neither the believers nor the disbelievers of the 9/11 narrative factor into their analysis is that those in power - from centuries of experience - have complete faith in the limitless elasticity of the Emperor’s New Clothes effect. It’s not as if they don’t know that destructions by fire and controlled demolition are fundamentally completely different kinds of destruction and there is no possibility of confusing one with the other, nor is it a case that they don’t know, as Fire Protection Engineer, Scott Grainger, says, that high rise steel frame buildings simply don’t come down by fire - that’s not a thing. They know, of course they know. But they also know:
Most people - regardless of their expertise which should direct them otherwise - will either believe or at least accept fire as the cause
A small minority - the derided “conspiracy theorists” - will recognise controlled demolition but this small minority is not powerful enough to cause problems in maintaining the fictional narrative …
… and that is why they brazenly showcase WTC-7’s perfect implosion from seven vantage points and clearly script media personnel to allude to controlled demolition, eg, Brian Williams’, “Can you confirm it was No. 7 that just went in,” “to go in” being a term used in controlled implosions due to the buildings falling in on their own footprint.
A common type of psyop is one where those in power - with the collaboration of agencies and other actors - stage an event, often a kind of drill, and push it out across global media 24/7 as real with the intention of pushing our buttons, particularly the “fear” button.
Psyops are operations with a very distinctive MO pushed out over and over and over in a ludicrously obvious manner with the people willfully going along with what is told to them. More on psyops in 8. The Big Lie fallacy.
5. Selecting the obviously invalid argument - Cherry-picking
Cherry-picking - When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept a position, and evidence that would go against the position is withheld. The stronger the withheld evidence, the more fallacious the argument.
For those not versed in the psyop modus operandi, an easy trap to fall into is to see a very obviously invalid argument and make your point against the “conspiracy theories” by crying, “Hey, look at this rubbish.” Sure there will be invalid arguments against the official narrative but very often those arguments come from those who are known in psyop analysis as “controlled opposition” agents whose purpose is to undermine the opposition by showing it as lacking credibility and also to mislead and divide genuine members of the opposition. There is no major psyop without controlled opposition agents and they do an amazingly effective job of keeping the truth suppressed.
An example in the 1700s of controlled opposition is Count Mirabeau, supposedly an early leader of the French Revolution but who was found, after his death, to have been paid by Louis XVI. On this page, at least, he seems to have led a complicated life so whether he was a controlled opposition agent in the black and white sense of the term is difficult to say … but then who knows who any of these people really are. Some form relationships with their infiltrees to the extent even of having children with them and when you read and watch them at work you can only ponder how they can spout so much truth against those in power … and yet be working for them.
Defenders of the covid narrative pounced gleefully on the film, Plandemic, and the alleged virologist, Judy Mikovits, spouting nonsense about a biolab-produced virus but anyone with the most basic understanding of controlled opposition can recognise what the film and Judy really represent.
Even without controlled opposition, those of us who oppose official narratives will get things wrong. One needs to canvass widely and look at all the information available in order to work out the truth as best one can.
6. OMG! You’re one of those tinfoil-hatted* people! - Argument from Intimidation fallacy
Argument from Intimidation fallacy (aka gaslighting) - An argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a method of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure . . . [It] consists of threatening to impeach an opponent’s character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate.
Well, if you’re a conspiracy theorist … ‘nuff said, right? No discussion needs to be engaged in, end of before even beginning. You’re not in a right mind, you’re a mouthpiece for David Icke, you’ve gone down the Qanon hole, you’re a Trump supporter, you’re …
A subscriber to an official narrative is often so blinded by it they suffer equal blindness to the fact that, in cases where expertise is required to appreciate certain elements, its critics include people as credentialled as its apologists; in other cases, the problems with the narrative can easily be appreciated directly from the narrative itself by anyone unblinded by the propaganda.
The subscribers deludedly believe that the so-called “conspiracy theorist” must go down deep, dark rabbit holes in order to obtain their “conspiracy theory”, have it indoctrinated into them by lunatics on the internet or get it wrong due to bias and suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. Of course, those who refute official narratives don’t always have a good argument … but equally, nor do those who defend them.
* Ironically, the term tin-foil hats originates from a very weird and prescient short story written in 1927 by Julian Huxley titled "The Tissue-Culture King", wherein the main character uses a metal hat to prevent being mind controlled by the villain scientist.
7. Your reasoning is based on bias, mine is rational - the Bias Blind Spot
The Bias Blind Spot - the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment. It’s like believing you’re the only driver on the road who knows what they’re doing.
It is astonishing how those who support official stories presume that the argument from the critic of the official story aka the “conspiracy theorist” must emerge from their biases or being misled, and not from clear, easily-identified facts … while theirs comes from a place of objectivity. But have they really done due diligence? Very often no and if they have made some attempt, they’ve only looked to find what they want to find - they’ve fallen into the confirmation bias they accuse the “conspiracy theorists” of.
It’s just so simple. Freefall acceleration agreed to by both the critics and NIST in the collapse of WTC-7 means controlled demolition. There is no way around this very simple, agreed-upon fact. And as recently-departed 9/11 scholar, Dr Graeme MacQueen, said: “There is no room in the official story for controlled demolition.” There is no bias, there is no being misled (we-ll there is - see 5. Cherry-picking and 9. False dilemma), there is just a simple fact (one of so very many) that says the official story of 9/11 is a load of cobblers.
While guidance from relevant professionals is helpful in certain ways, in a sense it is a form of distraction propaganda in how it can mislead us into thinking that serious study of the event is required to determine its true nature. We don’t need expert analysis to determine that from go to whoa the 9/11 story is one fanciful claim after another having no basis in reality. No remotely credible explanation has been given for the alleged catastrophic failure of the multi-trillion dollar US military and intelligence infrastructure four times in one morning - see superlative example of gobbledygook presented in Congress by General Richard Myers, Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11 - including the ludicrously improbable penetration of Defence HQ which categorically is simply out of the realm of any reasonable possibility and - as stated above - there’s no confusing destructions by fire and controlled demolition - we don’t need an academic study to confirm it for us, even if it does.
The question arises: why is the 9/11 story so extravagantly lacking in credibility? Why would its propagandist authors overegg the omelette in such a fashion? It didn’t need to be so farfetched surely but as analyst, Gerard Holmgren, said (my emphasis):
“The official story required either that one descended into total intellectual senility in order to still believe it – perhaps deliberately made ridiculous for that very purpose – or else that one keep one's intellect alive but destroy almost everything that one had previously believed about how society works.”
Gerard Holmgren’s words and the wildly improbable story of 9/11 are given some explanation in the following fallacies.
8. Is the fact of conspiracy the main concern? - no, it’s the Big Lie technique used to control our minds
The Big Lie - The fallacy of repeating a lie, fallacy, slogan, talking-point, nonsense-statement or deceptive half-truth over and over in different forms (particularly in the media) until it becomes part of daily discourse and people accept it without further proof or evidence. Sometimes the bolder and more outlandish the Big Lie becomes the more credible it seems to a willing audience.
One of the fundamental aspects of the Big Lie aka psyop (alluded to in 4. The Definist fallacy) is that - as stated in the definition above and seemingly counterintuitively - the bigger the lie, the better it works. And, as observed by British psychiatrist, Anthony Daniels (edited):
The purpose of propaganda is not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponds to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
While many critics of official stories may well believe a conspiracy has occurred whether they allude to it or not, the fact of conspiracy is not the priority. As already mentioned, psyops have been going on for millennia using the same techniques, isn’t it time we woke up to the mind control? I mean, really. Let’s wake up to the mind control techniques and then when those in power propagandise us with a big scary story 24/7 in order for them to introduce whatever it is they wish to introduce Problem > Reaction > Solution / Divide-and-Conquer style we can say, “No thanks, not buying.”
Why haven’t we evolved to detect and reject these rather basic button-pushing mind control techniques exercised on us remorselessly day in day out century after century? Why are we still child-adults under the spell of fabricated deliberate nonsense from those in power like children willfully maintaining belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy well past the appropriate age?
Why do we comply with those screwing us over and why do we play enabler to the psychopathic narcissists who rule us, betraying ourselves as much as we betray those calling out the mind control propaganda? What is wrong with us, why is it that only very few of us are learning?
9. The sophisticated Big Lie - the addition of the False Dilemma fallacy
False dilemma fallacy - When only two choices are presented yet more exist, or a spectrum of possible choices exists between two extremes. False dilemmas are usually characterized by “either this or that” language, but can also be characterized by omissions of choices. Another variety is the false trilemma, which is when three choices are presented when more exist.
See also Catte Black’s article, The Function of the Fake Binary.
What could be better than fooling the majority of people who are willing to accept whatever you say?
Fooling not just the ayesayers but the naysayers too! Oh yes, what delight to fool those who don’t believe you (as well as those who do) and what an effective way to keep the truth suppressed.
For 9/11 we were given two choices:
Story A. Terrorists did it
Story B. The US government did it
when the reality was:
C. The US government was responsible for the events of 9/11, however, they staged the death and injury.
The staging of death and injury doesn’t mean no one died or was injured but all the evidence provided for death and injury either supports it being staged, is clearly fake or has no particular credibility. The evidence is overwhelming that none of the alleged four passenger airliners crashed. Equally, while there is purported evidence suggesting the contrary, when we blow away the magic propaganda dust, the clear evidence strongly indicates that, following professional demolition protocols, full evacuations of the World Trade Centre were conducted prior to the building destructions.
Common responses from disbelievers of the 9/11 narrative to claims that death and injury were staged are (with responses to these responses):
They wouldn’t have cared about killing people.
There’s no argument against them not caring, however, the suggestion that they cared hasn’t been posited, the claim is based purely on the evidence.
They would have let them die because that was easier.
While we can see how bureaucrats and health professionals can be propagandised and coerced into implementing measures that kill and injure on the basis of over a century of fraudulent science, it is difficult to see how demolition crews, completely against their professional standards and ethos, would be propagandised and/or coerced to only partly evacuate buildings before destroying them … not to mention obtaining complicity in this crime from a significant number of others involved, including agency staff.
They would have killed and injured the people for real for greater realism and emotional impact.
No! That isn’t how propaganda works. They didn’t want to kill and injure people they only wanted our belief in it and psyops are all about mind control - not doing things for real unless wanted.
Another argument against staged death and injury, particularly from prominent disbelievers, is that they know a loved one / witness / survivor / colleague / other person having connection to death and injury. Well, of course! All part of the propaganda strategy. So many “actors” used like octopus tentacles to encircle prominent opposers of the narrative to steer their minds from the fundamental truth and keep them at the ineffectual second-level. Right off the bat, if we know that the four plane crashes were faked then we know all the alleged bereaved of the plane passengers are actors and there is no reason, a priori, for the same situation not to apply to the buildings. I think we can safely infer that just as they have Witness Protection programs for people needing to avoid retribution from criminals there are similar programs for those “dying” in covert operations.
They didn’t want to kill people for real and they didn’t need to to make us believe in their deaths ergo they didn’t do it for real … there may have been a few deliberate targets or accidental deaths and injuries but in the main the evidence clearly shows it was all staged.
It’s the evidence (underneath the magic propaganda dust) that has priority so let’s take a look at it. Please bear in mind that while a modest amount of evidence is presented, it is nevertheless extremely compelling and the onus isn’t on the author to prove that death and injury didn’t happen, rather it’s on those who made the claim that it did - and I point out that the people who told you 3,000 people died and 6,000 were injured were the selfsame people who told you about the terrorists, planes and buildings. If you find any evidence that favours real over staged, please let me know in the comments.
In the morning, ABC’s Cynthia McFadden comments on the lack of injured being brought in at Bellevue Hospital Emergency Intake which shows empty gurneys and wheelchairs with medical staff standing around while in the evening at the trauma centre set up in West Manhattan Cynthia tells us, “We’ve been seeing ambulances coming through all day and rescue vehicles, all of them for the most part empty with the exception of some rescue workers and some other rescuers at the scene.”
The footage of the people standing at the windows and images of the jumpers are unconvincing (compare to candid footage showing no signs of people at the windows).
The injured appear to be “drill” injured and show no signs of the maiming or serious injury we’d expect from the destruction of 110-storey buildings.
The miracle survivor stories have zero credibility.
The so-called “oral histories” taken from 118 firefighters of their experience on 9/11 betray no sense of “orality” in the absence of recordings we would expect the transcripts to be taken from, neither do they make a single reference to the alleged deaths of 343 of the firefighters’ colleagues while further they contain numerous other anomalies that completely undermine their authenticity, eg, a route to the WTC (located at the southern tip of Manhattan) from a fire station on the Upper East Side via Second Ave, Houston and West Side Hwy when the east side FDR Dr would be much more convenient and there is no southbound turn from Houston - see Nonsensicalities in the 9/11 firefighter oral histories.
9/11 was - in a nutshell - the biggest demolition job of all time (all seven WTC buildings plus a few others were ultimately destroyed) in the guise of a massive Full-Scale Anti-Terror Exercise comprising many smaller exercises and drills, a number about which we were told … with a crucial few we weren’t ... pushed out as a real terror event.
The False Dilemma propaganda strategy has also been used on other events including JFK, Pearl Harbour and the 1980 Bologna Station bombing as the evidence clearly shows that JFK’s alleged assassination was not only not committed by a lone gunman but that it wasn’t committed by anyone as it was faked - the questions of why and what happened to him I have no answer for. Like 9/11, the evidence shows that Pearl Harbour and Bologna Station were evacuated bombings.
10. If those in power had done it they would have … - Hypothesis Contrary to Fact
Hypothesis Contrary to Fact (Argumentum Ad Speculum): Trying to prove something in the real world by using imaginary examples alone, or asserting that, if hypothetically X had occurred, Y would have been the result.
The refuters of the 9/11 narrative have criticised Noam Chomsky for his claim:
“Now suppose the Bush administration had done it. They would have attributed [the 9/11 attacks] to Iraqis.”
Seemingly disingenuously, Chomsky ignores the fact that the propagandists, as is indicated above in the Big Lie fallacy, don’t want or need to make their story credible, that’s not not how propaganda works. Regardless of what we think should or would have happened, the evidence clearly tells us what happened … and what happened is not remotely in the realm of what they told us happened on 9/11.
11. That’s insane, that cannot be true - Argument from incredulity
Argument from incredulity: Concluding that because you can't or refuse to believe something, it must not be true, improbable, or the argument must be flawed. This is a specific form of the argument from ignorance.
When psyops aren’t in your paradigm of how the world works (as they aren’t in most people’s for a number of years at least) and you think of the Emperor’s New Clothes as a fairy story rather than an accurate representation of reality it’s understandable that you will fall into fallacious thinking. It is simply impossible for us to accept things outside our paradigm of how the world works. We’re not taught at school and university about psyops, we’re not taught that falsification of history has smothered many a psyop dating back through the centuries … but when the phenomenon of psyops is in your realm of knowledge, their distinctive MO makes them recognisable in an instant …
… and then what appears utterly insane is not the claim of “conspiracy theory” but rather wildly implausible narratives broadcast 24/7 day in day out, for example, boxcutter-armed terrorists taking over four passenger airliners in the best defended airspace in the world ultimately resulting in penetration of US Defence HQ and the destruction of at least seven buildings including three massive skyscrapers in New York’s financial centre and a respiratory illness with no symptoms distinguishing it from cold and flu turning the world upside down.
12. When the rule is that they must “tell” us the truth underneath the propaganda how is the rejection of the narrative in the realm of “theory”? The Loaded Question fallacy
Loaded Question fallacy - a question containing an unjustified (and often offensive) presupposition
The use of the word “theory” tends to suggest that a rejection of the narrative is based on thin grounds, however, we are told that those in power feel an obligation to “tell” us what they’re really up to in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for their Big Lies thereby putting the onus on us to call them out. If we don’t - according to their reasoning - we’re the ones at fault and thus they are spared karmic repercussions.
This is known as “revelation of the method” or “hidden in plain sight.” Indeed, the evidence for signals before (known as “predictive programming”), during and after their psyops is abundantly clear, not to mention an often lacking-in-credibility base narrative to start with … so the notion of “theory” is laughable. Admittedly, however, they lead us via multiple propaganda threads (often contradictory) on lots of wild goose chases and along lots of red herring trails so that even though the disbelievers might get the fact that a Big Lie has been told correct - zero theory about it - they are often misled in determining the true nature of the event being lied about, 9/11 being exemplar extraordinaire in that regard.
Whether it’s true or not that those in power aim to avoid karmic repercussions by obviously exposing their lies - seemingly counterintuitively - propaganda works better the less it corresponds with reality as stated in 8. The Big Lie fallacy. Presumably, if it didn’t, the “revelation of the method” technique would not feature in psyops.
Covid pandemic examples
Before:
Pandemic tabletop exercises: Event 201 (Oct 2019) and Clade X (2018)
Joint exercise by US agencies to respond to a severe pandemic of influenza originating in China, Crimson Contagion (2019);Films: Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic (2018), Pandemic (2016)
TV series: The Hot Zone (2019)
Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready, TED talk, 2015
2003: Cough and Awe, SARS by any other name, Steven Ransom
Start/during:
A variety of against-reality claims and images, eg, a Chinese research team supposedly finds Chinese cobras and many-banded kraits to be “reservoirs” of the virus, a claim later said to be “complete garbage” (a common feature of psyops being the spouting of nonsense followed by denial of it) and images of people falling flat on their face and laid out on hospital floors
Mike Pompeo telling us “We’re in a live exercise here,” in a press conference after which Trump leans over and says quietly “You should have let us … you should have let us know.” Neither Pompeo’s nor Trump’s words make any sense for a real pandemic … but they make perfect sense for a pandemic psyop or “exercise”.
Supposedly overwhelmed medical staff with seemingly lots of time to rehearse dance routines.
After:
This is a short video showing how we’re told the vaccine is 100% effective … but as time goes on the efficacy keeps dropping.
9/11 examples
Before: The Simpsons, 1997; numerous allusions in film and TV in this compilation - the item linked to is the pilot episode, “Pilot”, of the TV series, the Lone Gunmen, aired March 2001. This episode involved a character faking his death to uncover a conspiracy to hijack an airliner and fly it into the Twin Towers. Yes, really.
During: All the journalists (scroll to section Journalists - candid or scripted?) reporting on the collapse of WTC-7 refer to controlled demolition, not fire, and some refer to it having come down before it did.
After: The terrorists pop up alive … or just a case of mistaken identity? They yank us by the nose-ring this way and that.
There is no theory in the clear facts laid before us after we blow away the magic propaganda dust … the theory is all in the magic dust.
Use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" came about in 1967 in a CIA memo to agency higher-ups suggesting its use to criticize people skeptical of the Warren Report. Search and you'll find it online.
Thereafter it began appearing frequently in newspapers, and later in a forgettable book that supposed intellectuals like to cite. It's remarkable psychology, in that in practical use (not by media and political officials) it allows people of low curiosity/intelligence to 1) avoid thinking, and 2) to ridicule people who are more curious/intelligent.
So suppose that you, Petra, are at a gathering of friends and relatives and you forget etiquette and mentions that, say, Sandy Hook was a staged event (or in my case, Columbine), one of those at the gathering will react by chanting "coo coo, coo coo" and ask where's your tin hat.. The person doing that ridicule will have no standing, being incurious and a non-reader, probably burdened by a low IQ and thoroughly a Dunning Krueger mascot. But you lose, and he/she wins. You learn from that episode to STFU. Ain't it amazing how well it works?
I doff my cap to the guy who wrote that 1967 memo. It is clever beyond the norm.
Fabulous find, Petra! Very glad to discover your Substack ~ and thanks for taking time to compile this excellent resource on critical thinking.
Just now added a link to your article in the following sections of my "red pill" library:
> Library: BeyondC19.org
> Death of Critical Thinking & Intellectual Curiosity
-- https://workflowy.com/s/beyond-covid-19/SoQPdY75WJteLUYx#/1c62949f7932
> Conspiracy Theories
-- https://workflowy.com/s/beyond-covid-19/SoQPdY75WJteLUYx#/df582cc23840