Conspiracy theories are like viruses and religions - they mutate

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In a WELT essay, Jörg Phil Friedrich defended conspiracy theories as “corrective against excessive acceptance of state rules and measures”.

Yes, in this sense conspiracy theories also played a “necessary role” in liberal democracies, where there is no conspiracy of the rulers against the people.

Friedrich can only say so because he did not understand what constitutes a conspiracy theory.

Friedrich rightly says that it is "implausible to assume that short-term secret agreements and long-term mutual liabilities" are only isolated cases and that "our political system is not influenced to any significant extent by such networks".

Clear.

Take the diesel emissions scandal, for example.

Corporations seem to have agreed with each other, for example about cheating software, and at the same time tried to convince journalists and politicians with falsified figures of the cleanliness of diesel cars and to obtain appropriate reporting and interventions in the European Union.

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Because of the existence of such agreements and obligations, Friedrich believes it is “necessary to take conspiracy theories seriously as a possible description of reality”.

Not at all.

It is necessary to defend and ensure the freedom of the press and investigative journalism, parliament and the various state control agencies.

Laws against illegal collusion

Adam Smith, the great theorist and defender of the market economy, wrote in his major work: “People from the same industry rarely get together, even if only for diversion and pleasure, without the conversation leading to a conspiracy against the general public or some ruse to raise prices. ”This is not a conspiracy theory, even though Smith used the word with polemical intent, but an observation that is so general that all democratic governments have laws against monopolies and monopoly and illegal collusion between individual companies.

These days the EU and the USA are taking action against Google, Facebook and other internet giants.

Not because they adhere to a conspiracy theory, but because they adhere to the theory of the free market economy, according to which monopolies are always detrimental to consumers and, because of their market power, also tend to be detrimental to democracy itself.

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Friedrich thus confuses vigilance against attempts by powerful interests to undermine the market economy and democracy, a characteristic inherent in every investigative editor, with adherence to or formulation of conspiracy theories.

But that's nonsense.

There have always been, of course, there are and always will be conspiracies.

The men of July 20th formed a conspiracy against Adolf Hitler, and we honor them for it.

But there was no “Jewish world conspiracy”, as the dictator, his willing executors and an all too large part of the German people believed at the time.

There was no “conspiracy of the bloc of the right and Trotskyists”, no “conspiracy of the Zionists”, no “medical conspiracy” against Joseph Stalin.

Conspiracy theories are delusions that are not there to explain reality better, but to make the unreal real, the monstrous, possible.

Jörg Phil Friedrich compares conspiracy theories with the theory of electrons in physics.

You cannot see electrons, "but you can explain a lot if you assume that they exist".

It is similar with “good”, ie “plausible” conspiracy theories.

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I ignore the fact that you cannot see many things that undoubtedly exist, oxygen and carbon dioxide for example, and that the existence of electrons was experimentally proven over 100 years ago;

that between the world conspiracy of the Jews against humanity, with which one could also “explain a lot”, from capitalism to women's emancipation, which nevertheless did not exist, and the theories of subatomic particles, an essential difference has to be established.

This is probably related to the fact that the theory of electrons, as Friedrich himself has to acknowledge, resulted in such useful things as televisions, computer monitors, electron microscopes, X-ray tubes and electron welding machines, while conspiracy theories gave rise to pogroms, mass and genocides.

Of course not always.

There are harmless conspiracy theories.

Think of the theory that it was not the actor William Shakespeare who wrote the dramas that bear his name, but someone who, for certain reasons, had to keep his identity a secret.

The current favorite for the role is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

If one wants to believe the supporters of this theory, then not only the actor and the nobleman himself, but also a large number of the alleged poet's colleagues and various courtiers who knew both and the literary abilities of one and the other, must join in a great conspiracy have agreed to remain silent.

In this theory, however, one can make out a characteristic of all conspiracy theories.

They are not refutable.

So the fact that Edward de Vere died in 1604, twelve years before the supposed straw man, but that plays in Shakespeare's name continued to appear, even with current allusions, seems to refute the “Oxford Hypothesis”.

Not even close.

The pieces, it is said, are simply wrongly dated;

de Vere wrote it earlier, the actor only brushed it up a bit, as is the case with today's Hollywood wage clerk doing the remake of a classic.

And so it goes on forever.

Conspiracy theories are like viruses and religions: they mutate to remain irrefutable.

But scientific theories - and investigative research - are refutable.

If electrons do not do what they are supposed to do according to the theory, the theory is wrong.

If you don't find any cheat software, there is no report about it.

A “global world conspiracy that controls everything and only gives us the illusion of a democratic separation of powers”, says Friedrich “implausible”.

But it cannot be refuted.

But what about the alleged “Soros Plan”?

According to Viktor Orbán, the Holocaust survivor, former speculator and current philanthropist George Soros wants to destroy the Christian character of the continent through mass immigration to Europe, dissolve the nations and impose his left agenda on the defenseless peoples.

Shadow networks of the trolls

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Why Soros wants this is something his respectable critics leave open;

they leave it to the shadow networks of trolls and right-wing extremists to express the motive: Jewish revenge.

What Morgenthau did not succeed in, Soros wants to achieve in another way.

How “plausible” is that, Mr. Friedrich?

What does that “explain”?

And when the supposedly omnipresent influence of the Jew Soros is used to explain Angela Merkel's immigration policy, the European Union's criticism of corruption in Hungary, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia and Trump's defeat against Joe Biden: Is that really a “necessary corrective against too great unquestioned acceptance of government regulations and measures ”?

Or rather a new edition of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"?

And so on and so on, from QAnon to the “lateral thinkers”.

The point is this: Conspiracy theorists are not interested in being a “corrective”.

They project their fantasies of power and domination onto others.

The supporters of the "Oxford Hypothesis" fantasize about a plot of mainstream literary studies against them, in reality they would love to fill all the chairs with their people and once and for all dispel the annoying idea that the son of a mere glove maker could do the greatest Have written dramas of world literature.

Hitler ranted about the Jews' plans for world domination and planned world domination himself.

And between the lovable-absurd and the hateful-inhuman are the other conspiracy theorists.

Not all of Hitler's or Stalin's little ones.

But all with more than a shot of paranoia and another shot of megalomania.

There is not the slightest reason to give them a “necessary role” in politics.

Especially not in the presumptuous name of the philosophy of science.

"Piss off" - frustration among corona demonstrators

Their demonstration was forbidden, this time the police consistently: arriving "lateral thinkers" and hooligans experienced a fiasco in the Corona stronghold of Dresden.

Your attempts to cheat and the difficult deliberations of the police - in our video report.

Source: Martin Heller / WELT