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Experts: Obama Conspiracy Theories Will Never Die
Posted by Wisco • 12/05/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Barack Obama, conspiracy, scotus, wingnuts
A good article at Salon about the Obama birth certificate tempest in a teapot and conspiracy theories in general. (www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/05/birth_certificate/)
A taste:
Why the stories about Obama's birth certificate will never die
...The faux controversy isn't going to go away soon. Yes, Obama was born in Hawaii, and yes, he is eligible to be president. But according to several experts in conspiracy theories, and in the psychology of people who believe in conspiracy theories, there's little chance those people who think Obama is barred from the presidency will ever be convinced otherwise. "There's no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody's mind," says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master's degree in psychology. "The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it ... Once you're committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind."
Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory "develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence," Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. "As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy."
Evan Harrington, a social psychologist who is an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, agrees. "One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special," Harrington says. "The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they'll have convenient ways to discredit [it]."
My advice is to get used to laughing at them. They're constitutionally incapable of taking "you're wrong" for an answer. They'll be crazy for the rest of their lives.
User Comments
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there's a pretty big difference between these people and 9/11 truthers (for one example) because the "obama's not really president because (insert stupid reason here)" people are just a bunch of partisan hacks who can't accept the fact that they lost the damned election.
the nut-jobs who are still talking about bill clinton having a couple dozen people murdered are, again, very unlike the folks who think LBJ had kennedy killed. don't lump partisan hacks in with REAL conspiracy nuts.-
You find a lot of these things from people on both sides of the aisle -- the people who are freaked out about the "Amero," for example. Both left and right.
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i'm not really in disagreement with you on this subject. there are plenty of crazies on all sides, 9/11 truthers being the best example of that. but i stick with my basic point: MOST of the "obama can't be president because..." people are just partisan hacks, NOT tin-foil hat wearing obsessives.
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Isn't it nice that the right-wing nut jobs are irrelevant now? Ahhhhhhh...
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To some, their reality is so much less interesting than the conspiracy theories. -
Hey man I'm telling you that Obama is an alien. Hey abducted me in his ufo once. It was freaky. -
And the liberal nut jobs now believe they are on top of the world. haha
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Conspiracy theories of any sort linger and linger. There are people who still believe the Moon shot was fake, the Holocaust didn't occur, JFK was assassinated by the CIA, the world is flat, etc. Belief persists far beyond rationality or evidence.
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That's why we wind up with people like Bush as president.
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and Obama
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Hummmm, David Ray Griffin has a point... lol!
"A conspiracy is simply an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime. One holds a conspiracy theory about some event (such as a bank robbery or a corporation defrauding its stockholders) if one believes that it resulted from such an agreement. A conspiracy theorist is simply someone who accepts such a theory.
According to the Bush-Cheney administration, the 9/11 attacks resulted from a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and various members of al-Qaeda, including the 19 men accused of hijacking the airliners. This official account is, therefore, a conspiracy theory. (This is not a new point: I made it in my first book on 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor. I even made it in the title of my 2007 book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. ) Accordingly, insofar as you accept this official account, you are a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. And yet you evidently do not consider yourself an idiot. Rather, you save that description, along with the term "conspiracy theorist," for those who reject the official conspiracy theory."
www.alternet.org/story/100688/the_ultimate_9_11_%27truth%27_showdown%3A_dav... -
"In addition to this one-sidedness, there is a second problem with your claim that anyone challenging a theory must have a complete alternative theory: It is false. There are several ways to challenge a theory. You can cast doubt on it by showing that its alleged evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. You can show that a theory is probably false by pointing to evidence that apparently contradicts it. You can positively disprove a theory by providing evidence showing that it cannot possibly be true. The 9/11 truth movement has done all three with regard to the official account."
DRG
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