"With this [CIA] memo and the CIA's influence in the media," author Peter Janney wrote in a guest column on our site last fall, "the concept of 'conspiracy theorist' was engendered and infused into our political lexicon and became what it is today: a term to smear, denounce, ridicule, and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services."
Janney, whose late father Wistar Janney had been a high-ranking CIA executive, continued: "People who want to pretend that conspiracies don't exist -- when in fact they are among the most common modus operandi of significant historical change throughout the world and in our country -- become furious when their naive illusion is challenged."
There's a difference between believing conspiracies exist (which they obviously do) and taking for granted that any random conspiracy theory is probably true.
For instance - no amount of Snowden revelations will make it more likely that FEMA death camps are waiting for us under Denver International Airport, or that HAARP is being used to control the weather, or that NASA is covering up their occult demonolatry regarding the ancient Egyptian hyperdimensional network between Earth and Mars -- all of which are a;sp conspiracy theories which people believe.
I'm reminded of a quote by Alan Moore:
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is
that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because
that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it
is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not
The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the
Gray Alien Theory.
The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.
The world is rudderless.”
"A conspiracy theory is where you believe in a theory where no matter how much disconfirming evidence comes in, you somehow convert that disconfirming evidence into part of the conspiracy."
Janney, whose late father Wistar Janney had been a high-ranking CIA executive, continued: "People who want to pretend that conspiracies don't exist -- when in fact they are among the most common modus operandi of significant historical change throughout the world and in our country -- become furious when their naive illusion is challenged."