*Other word for "bullshit".
Around the time I dreamed of this, I was also following the case of french comedian Dieudonné, who's very critical if Israel (some say antisemite, I don't). I don't like that he was censored but trouble is, many of his fans also believe that there is this this dark, uber-secret jewish conspiracy (so secret it's on Youtube, appearently) that rules France and the World with an iron fist. It's the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all over again. That was old when my grandma was young!
I'm with Noam Chomsky on this. People believe in conspiracy theories because the thought of a random, unplanned world where wars and disasters are the result of all-powerful people rather than leaders as fragile as you and me with their bad sides, their weaknesses, their fears, their incompetence is much more reassuring. At least SOMEONE controls the World, even though they're evil.
I don't believe in the men behind the curtain. Politics are not a Hollywood blockbuster with good guys and villains. Those don't exist in real life. Even so-called World War 1 supervillain kaiser Wilhelm said he did not want the war.
That being said, I can't blame the people who believe those stories when you look at the attitude of present governments. Dieudonné denounces a government that commemorates and re-commemorates the Holocaust. It was a genocide, okay. But those same governments where that happened were making even worse atrocities in Africa just a decade or two before. Nobody talks about that! Every time someone want to point out what is going on in Gaza, the World's largest prison the Shoah excuse is pulled out right in front of their faces and that behavior alone does much worse to damage the memory of what Hitler did than all the genuine anti-semites of the planet put together.
I don't believe in the men behind the curtain. Politics are not a Hollywood blockbuster with good guys and villains. Those don't exist in real life. Even so-called World War 1 supervillain kaiser Wilhelm said he did not want the war.
That being said, I can't blame the people who believe those stories when you look at the attitude of present governments. Dieudonné denounces a government that commemorates and re-commemorates the Holocaust. It was a genocide, okay. But those same governments where that happened were making even worse atrocities in Africa just a decade or two before. Nobody talks about that! Every time someone want to point out what is going on in Gaza, the World's largest prison the Shoah excuse is pulled out right in front of their faces and that behavior alone does much worse to damage the memory of what Hitler did than all the genuine anti-semites of the planet put together.
When you look at history, charlatans, rumors and nutcases get an audience when people don't believe in the political leaders anymore and the social order needs some major fixing. The two decades just before the French Revolution saw characters like Cagliostro, the Count of Saint-Germain and Mesmer. When the "Inexpliqué" series of books, that were also an inspiration for this story arc, came out, it was the late 1970s. Just after the Watergate and in France, people had so little trust in their elected officials that the presidential elections of 1980 saw a litteral clown, Coluche, run for president there.
Closer to us, one of the most celebrated conspiraracy theories of our time, the whole Jesus-had-children thing, was triggered by a book, the DaVinci code. The same year, just as famously, the World's most powerful State invaded a poor country without the shadow of a proof.
