The idea of conspiracy theories predates JFK’s assassination by decades. A quick Google Ngram search confirms this. Richard Hofstadter’s influential work—The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the ideas behind which Hofstadter developed nearly ten years before JFK’s death—remains relevant today.
That said, the term “conspiracy theorist” may have been popularized by U.S. intelligence agencies in response to alternative explanations of the assassination.
While theorizing about hidden coordination is sometimes essential for understanding events, anyone who has debated a conspiracy theorist knows their defining trait isn’t suspicion—it’s their tendency to adapt their theory to fit any contradictory evidence. Their fallback claim is always that “the evidence was faked,” disregarding the extreme foresight and control such deception would require. It’s extreme overfitting, which doesn’t mean it isn’t true, but I believe is reason for skepticism.
A little disappointing to hear two folks expounding on Foucault & the panopticon, fervently framing COVID as an illustrative instance of statist flex, and yet make no mention at all of smartphones and Palantir-esque data mining. Collective submission to the instantaneous processing of and micro-targeting of bio-, financial-, and preference-data is a lot more relevant than whether experts like Fauci should influence public policy.
Okay - I’m at 12 minutes now and see Geoff discussed Hofstadter’s work.
The idea of conspiracy theories predates JFK’s assassination by decades. A quick Google Ngram search confirms this. Richard Hofstadter’s influential work—The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the ideas behind which Hofstadter developed nearly ten years before JFK’s death—remains relevant today.
That said, the term “conspiracy theorist” may have been popularized by U.S. intelligence agencies in response to alternative explanations of the assassination.
While theorizing about hidden coordination is sometimes essential for understanding events, anyone who has debated a conspiracy theorist knows their defining trait isn’t suspicion—it’s their tendency to adapt their theory to fit any contradictory evidence. Their fallback claim is always that “the evidence was faked,” disregarding the extreme foresight and control such deception would require. It’s extreme overfitting, which doesn’t mean it isn’t true, but I believe is reason for skepticism.
A little disappointing to hear two folks expounding on Foucault & the panopticon, fervently framing COVID as an illustrative instance of statist flex, and yet make no mention at all of smartphones and Palantir-esque data mining. Collective submission to the instantaneous processing of and micro-targeting of bio-, financial-, and preference-data is a lot more relevant than whether experts like Fauci should influence public policy.