The age of conspiracy

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISTRUST

- by Taha Ali

The past year has been a rollercoaster of a ride for conspiracy theories.

First and foremost, the Covid lab-leak scenario is back with a bang. There is now hard evidence of a clandestine coordinated effort among a group of high-profile scientists to manipulate the public debate on the origins of the virus. In March, an opinion piece published by The New York Times stated that “we were badly misled” on this topic, going so far as to say “perhaps we were misled on purpose.”

Also, in March, the US government declassified thousands of documents pertaining to the assassination of the then-president, John F. Kennedy, in 1963. One of the most popular conspiracies to date, this huge data dump only created more questions. Over the past six decades, the majority of Americans have largely doubted the official lone-gunman story. A reinvestigation by a US House Select Committee in the 1970s actually concluded that there was a genuine conspiracy behind Kennedy’s killing.

And every few years, the 9/11 saga takes a new twist. This April, the 60 Minutes show on CBS showcased recently unsealed video footage, featuring a foreign national and close associate of the 9/11 hijackers — likely an intelligence service operative from a prominent US ally country — undertaking detailed filming of sites in Washington DC prior to the attacks. Among his belongings, investigators recovered sketches and equations to calculate the descent of airplanes to hit a potential target. Families of 9/11 victims have requested his extradition to face justice.

Alternative narratives are also piling up. UFO sightings no longer raise eyebrows. Earlier this year, a former US security official entered a report in the Congressional Record, describing secret decades-long Pentagon programmes studying extraterrestrial life. A formal Congressional hearing on the topic in 2023 featured eyewitnesses to UFO encounters.