February 15, 2023 - 3:10pm
If ever there was a week to be conspiratorial, it was this one. First, four ‘unidentified flying objects’ were shot down in American airspace. Then there was the release of a dossier by veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claiming to prove America’s part in the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. And finally, a freight train derailed in Ohio, causing a toxic plume of vinyl chloride to hang over the village of East Palestine. The exact area of the spill had been used just last year as the setting of White Noise, a Netflix adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel about an ‘Airborne Toxic Event’.
If ever there was a week to be nostalgic, it was also this one. Western conspiracists seem to be returning to a retro set of stories about the mysteries of the universe. Aliens, an absolute mainstay of theorists of the ’90s and noughties like David Icke, are finally back in fashion. Reported sightings of extraterrestrial aerial phenomena are on the up, with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recording 510 sightings in 2022 compared to 366 in 2021.
A resurgent interest in vintage conspiracies can be traced back to the earliest days of the pandemic. In 2021 new footage alleging to be of ‘Bigfoot’ taken in Idaho coincided with a five-year high in US Google searches for ‘Sasquatch’. Such was the reignited interest in chemtrails in the same year that National Geographic felt compelled to publish a debunking by the US Air Force. The Loch Ness monster was ‘spotted’ (according to Scotland’s official ‘Sightings Register’) more times in 2021 than any other year, partly thanks to a webcam set up on the banks of the lake.
The increasingly disassociated nature of post-pandemic conspiracy might be to blame. Polling released this week by UnHerd shows that 38% of the British population agrees that ‘the world is controlled by a secretive elite’. Biomedical disaster weaponised to curtail freedoms, the World Economic Forum making grand plans for a one-world-government and 5G towers spreading disease are all distinctly de-personalised and tech-inflected theories. Unlike Bigfoot or ET, these contemporary conspirators cannot be caught in the act or ‘come in peace’. When it comes to finding joy rather than nihilism in speculation, you can’t beat the classics.
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SubscribeConspiracy theories used to make good movies. No-one thought you would need to believe it to like the story. Now, of course, movies involving a conspiracy theory are likely to be cancelled. Wonder why?
Is there a conspiracy to conspire against conspiracy?
I believe there is a conspiracy to conspire against conspiracy by making everything seem like a conspiracy so figuring out which one is a conspiracy or a conspiracy conspired by conspirators to draw attention from other conspiracies is nearly impossible. A complete overload of noise and guff to distract from the years-long state of exception.
Excellent, Mr. Wright! Your ‘disappearing up its own fundament’ argument neatly satirises the rubbish that passes for ‘news’ on social media.
Just remember, the go to message of damage control when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t or want something inconvenient to go away is to lie your ass off and pretend nothing happened.
Otherwise known as the “New York Method”.
Otherwise known as the “New York Method”.
Just remember, the go to message of damage control when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t or want something inconvenient to go away is to lie your ass off and pretend nothing happened.
Excellent, Mr. Wright! Your ‘disappearing up its own fundament’ argument neatly satirises the rubbish that passes for ‘news’ on social media.
I believe there is a conspiracy to conspire against conspiracy by making everything seem like a conspiracy so figuring out which one is a conspiracy or a conspiracy conspired by conspirators to draw attention from other conspiracies is nearly impossible. A complete overload of noise and guff to distract from the years-long state of exception.
Is there a conspiracy to conspire against conspiracy?
Conspiracy theories used to make good movies. No-one thought you would need to believe it to like the story. Now, of course, movies involving a conspiracy theory are likely to be cancelled. Wonder why?
OK – now I do not want anyone to think I am a nut – But, and this is really true….
Way back in the Remote Winter Forest, alone, camped far from other humans in tall Mountains, in the Full Moon, and the brilliant blue tree shadows on the dazzling snow – I heard Yetis singing.. I really heard them; they were close…….amazing… and when I leapt out of my sleeping bag to run to them the singing cut off like a light switch…. it was a very powerful moment….I should have just listened to them, but without any conscious thought I just found I was out of the sleeping bag and running through the snow in their direction…it was wild……
Hallucinations either just before sleep, or just as one is waking up can feel quite real. Not to say this was your situation, but this clinically validated fact would lead your readers to, at the very least, consider such an event as a possible explanation for your experience.
Personally, I find your story quite artistically charming. Whether it really happened, or not, you have my upvote.
Enchanting. Recognizably melodic? Which register predominated? Some many questions left unanswered. “…Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
Hallucinations either just before sleep, or just as one is waking up can feel quite real. Not to say this was your situation, but this clinically validated fact would lead your readers to, at the very least, consider such an event as a possible explanation for your experience.
Personally, I find your story quite artistically charming. Whether it really happened, or not, you have my upvote.
Enchanting. Recognizably melodic? Which register predominated? Some many questions left unanswered. “…Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
OK – now I do not want anyone to think I am a nut – But, and this is really true….
Way back in the Remote Winter Forest, alone, camped far from other humans in tall Mountains, in the Full Moon, and the brilliant blue tree shadows on the dazzling snow – I heard Yetis singing.. I really heard them; they were close…….amazing… and when I leapt out of my sleeping bag to run to them the singing cut off like a light switch…. it was a very powerful moment….I should have just listened to them, but without any conscious thought I just found I was out of the sleeping bag and running through the snow in their direction…it was wild……
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Unfettered questioning is a hallmark of a healthy society.