The Limits Of Conspiracy Theories

By on July 26, 2012 in News 32

Algr (CC)

For me, the accusations of government conspiracy that a certain loudmouthed radio host promoted immediately following the Aurora massacre did more to rubbish any conspiracy theory that he and his followers espouse (9/11 Inside Job, et al) than almost anything else he’s ever done. Apparently I’m not alone, as evidenced by Steve Benen’s post on the Maddow Blog:

David Frum noticed yesterday that most Democratic officials, even after the massacre in Aurora, have shown no interest in proposing new gun-control measures, which makes the conspiracy theory underpinning the “Fast & Furious” controversy look pretty silly.

The right-wing theory of the case in the Fast & Furious scandal is that the Obama administration hoped to generate demand for gun control in the United States by allowing the export of deadly guns to Mexico.

Yet demand for gun control does not respond even to mass murders inside the United States.

If you were a secret gun-snatcher, would you ever imagine that gun crime inside Mexico would produce a better result?

There Frum goes again, trying to bring logic into the discourse in an election year.

I would note, however, that there is a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist, popular with Drudge, who argued on Friday that the administration and gun-control advocates may have been involved in the murders in Aurora, as a sort of domestic version of “Fast & Furious.”…

[continues on the Maddow Blog]

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  • Drinky McGee

    I always head to the Infowars site whenever anything like Aurora happens, because the comments over there go straight for total delusion without a moment’s pause. I feel compelled to watch the cognitive train wreck. It’s ironic, since many of the commenters are exactly the sort of gunhumping lunatics who perpetrate mass shootings.

    And now, I await their arrival in this comment section, where they will talk about being awake and stuff.

    • Frank Person

       And what kinda lunatic are you?  You are some kind of lunatic, we just don’t know for sure.
       what kind.  I suspect you are the most dangerous kind, liberal.

      • Calypso_1

        N o t t h e m o s t d a n g e r o u s k i n d

        • Liam_McGonagle

          You’ve just identified a new flavour of disturbing.

          • Calypso_1

            A journey into transactional behaviorism as served up by the ever tricksy transmorphological mytho-aesthetes otherwise known as Huli Jing.

          • Jin The Ninja

            many-tailed foxes are one of my favourite brand of tricksters. i particularly like the idea that if they intermarry with a human, the resultant child is magickal i.e. abe no seimei. although huli jing are definitely powerful in their own right.

          • Calypso_1

            I like the idea that they eat your liver.  Combine that with Prometheus and you get a never ending cycle of foxy party love.  Screw giving it up to the Sky Lord.

          • Jin The Ninja

            lol! yes!

      • JaceD

        You’re comment reads like a paranoid lunatic. I’m curious to know how a “liberal” is dangerous?

        • http://www.facebook.com/arthur.stordahl Arthur Stordahl

          Oligarchic collectivism, it says in the book-1984…well, Also gov documents going back to 1949-a soviet style monopolistic system with american zest for production-Carnegie Foundations when teachers failed their request to contol the education system a re-write history~Norman Hobbs-Comitte head on investigating Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations [circa 1980 interview] Reese papers? I forget.
          Oh yes, first it was arts and entertainment~they always new a right wing approach would fail. Marxist Ecco theories would be in better standing. Green is the new red ;~)
          ..and yes, I too am a liberal, for 30 yrs, still exist but, more sheepish fools claiming the world is ending unless we let the professional tell us how to conduct ourselves BTW the foundations did indeed take over the Education, as planned 100yrs back.Their first-Arts and Entertainment ie Media

    • BrianApocalypse

       You SHEEP! Open your EYES! You’re just a SHILL for the NWO and a disinformation agent sent to write comments on the internet for your freemasonic masters! MKULTRA COINTELPRO SHILL!

      • Drinky McGee

        *applauds*

  • The Baffler

    Those guns are doing a great job of securing our freedom. How long has it been since the Patriot Act was put into place, and not a single gun has somehow repealed it?

  • charlieprimero

    Hahhaha.  If Majestic considers Alex Jones’ Aurora ranting the outrageous final straw, he needs to listen to more Alex.

    C’mon man, at least attempt to become somewhat familiar with the Fear Porn industry before attempting to comment on it.

    Otherwise you look like the retard who goes to a craft beer forum and bitches about how Natural Lite isn’t good beer.

    • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

      man i know real people like you described in the last sentence, just sad

    • http://disinfo.com Majestic

      I know him rather better than you might think. This post was preceded by “For me,” indicating that it’s personal. You’re welcome to share your own favorite Jones classics; I’m sure I’ll agree that they are equally mad, just not the one that pushed my buttons quite as much as his Aurora commentary.

    • Calypso_1

      I think Disinfo staff have been swimming in the Deep end for quite a while now.

  • lilbear68

    fast and furious was actually begun in the  w. bush years

    • Frank Person

       Wrong, Bush did operation wide receiver and it was very much different.  They didn’t lose track of thousands of guns.  Obama/Holder did.

  • namvetted68

    Frum’s article says as much about the republican leaders as it does about the dems since there is zero chance any of the former would consider gun legislation due to their being captured by the conservative gun nuts who have taken over the leadership of the NRA.

  • Devon Graham

    Jones is an idiot, that has been well established. The knuckledraggers who hang on his every word are evidence of that, try having a conversation with them. This still reeks of MKULTRA, IMO. Jones isn’t really pushing that though, he has a right wing agenda that has become glaringly obvious in the past few years when he hitched his wagon to the Paul brigade.

    Never trust a former Pat Buchanan campaign employee.

  • IPLSD

    Alex Jones is doing his own thing which is more than the majority of people can say. If you say something that’s true and a ufologist and someone from the John Birch society and someone else from the KKK and the pope all agree that it’s true, it doesn’t mean that their collective belief systems are imparted on him. It also doesn’t discredit anything he’s said in the past either. He’s expressing his opinion three hours a day every day (how many of you could honestly do that?) and he not only dodges the framed arguments of the mainstream media, he recognizes them for the diversions they are and cuts through the b.s. to point out elements of the headlines that people aren’t paying attention to, trying to figure out what it all means. Honestly it wasn’t AJ that brought up the gun control issue though – every mainstream outlet was talking about it the next morning and haven’t really stopped since. Is it a coincidence that the UN Arms Trade Treaty is hot off the presses ready to be signed tomorrow? To quote the Rise of the Dark Knight movie:
     ”You’re not allowed to believe in coincidences anymore.”

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    Terence McKenna Awake in the Dream
    http://youtu.be/HlMU5_T04w4

    I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying,
    that the real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control,
    absolutely no one.
    This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos.
    There may be entities seeking control, but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself.
    It’s like trying to control a dream.
    “Dreaming Awake at the End of Time”

    TM – “Understanding and Imagination in the Light of Nature”

  • Rooti

    There are no conspiracies, the government is too stupid to pull off anything, no one is in control. What a sad bunch of naive liberals.

    • kurisushiro

       Liberals aren’t the only people making up whacko conspiracy theories. What about all that “death panel” crap Palin pushed a couple years ago?

  • Frank Person

    To dipweed david Frum:  They did enact new laws for the border states because of FnF, it was created to make it easier to implement that new legislation. The operation did nothing else.  Unless you call a dead border agent productive.

    The theaters in Colorado are a restricted area for guns, too bad the joker didn’t obey the law.  All the people that did obey the law were sitting ducks.    Who is to blame for that?  Let the citizens chose to arm themselves or not.  Don’t make laws that deny citizens the right to protect themselves no matter where they are.   No matter where you are you have the right to protect your life.  And if a gun affords you that protection, who has the right to deny you that protection.

  • DrDavidKelly

    We make up stories to explain away the missing detail. Just like 9/11 … how can we know the truth when all the evidence was removed? It leaves a huge gaping hole of doubt and we’re left fumbling for answers. Questions about Holmes possible accomplices, did he have bomb making skills etc? We’re not going to get these questions answered. So we postulate and become suspicious and possibly rightly so. Why were there no fingerprints on the blade that I killed myself with – another example ??

  • http://twitter.com/WarWithEastasia warwitheastasia

    What’s the point of coyly referring to him as “a certain loudmouthed radio host” when one of the post’s tags is “Alex Jones”?  He threatens to sue anyone who says anything about him.  Bill Cooper did an entire show about how Jones once claimed Russians were shooting ICBMs at the US and WW3 was hours away from starting, causing a mini-panic among the more paranoid public access viewers in Austin.  Jones doesn’t believe half the shit he says; paranoid schizos call into his show w/ alarming frequency, and instead of being even remotely responsible/ethical about it, he validates their hallucinations and tells them they’re victims of “satanic MK Ultra psy warfare”.  Half of the modern “conspiracy” movement is already against Jones, I don’t know why you’d be so reserved about criticizing him.  Unless, of course, you’re afraid of getting sued.

  • http://twitter.com/OccupyWear1 Occupy Wear

    The nonsensical leaps your logic relies on leave me a bit disgusted, and you’re in the same arena as those you are criticizing.  Rather than honestly analyzing the conspiracy FACTS (ie. giving assault weapons to gun traffickers and drug cartels) you start with random theories you can poke holes in.  This type of reasoning is irrelevant, counterproductive, farcical.  You then make even greater leaps by citing other theories and lumping those in too, without the need to assess any actual evidence about anything.  Why do they print that nonsense here?  

    If this is the standard of journalism at disinfo, I guess I’m going to have to reassess coming here at all.

  • http://www.facebook.com/arthur.stordahl Arthur Stordahl

    Aurora was some time ago now, and not much has change .. still some paranoiac ppl trying to link fictitious things into a point where, somebody wants to take your guns. We have the 2nd amendment and live under a pres, and vice P, who both said-nobody is out to take your guns! Letem’ try, he aint taking my BARETTA, with a 12 shot clip….ooops, on the list!

  • http://www.facebook.com/arthur.stordahl Arthur Stordahl

    Aurora was some time ago now, and not much has change .. still some paranoiac ppl trying to link fictitious things into a point where, somebody wants to take your guns. We have the 2nd amendment and live under a pres, and vice P, who both said-nobody is out to take your guns! Letem’ try, he aint taking my BARETTA, with a 12 shot clip….ooops, on the list!

  • http://www.facebook.com/arthur.stordahl Arthur Stordahl

    Countless children arrested for terrorist threats. One did receive a reduced sentence….umm ‘intent to harm’ (?), 5 yrs old girl for toy guns, bubble blower hello kitty gun, paper gun lego gun or simple pointing a finger. Ms. school kids also brought home form for a list of any firearms in the household, $100 fine upon refusal.