Conspiracy theories, ranging from the JFK assassination to the moon landing, persist because they offer complex explanations for significant events, tap into distrust of power, and are deeply ingrained in human psychology's pattern-seeking nature.
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conspiracy many Americans still use that
word when talking about the
assassination of President Kennedy 55
years ago this past Thursday and while
we're talking conspiracy what about the
moon did we really land there
there are plenty who think not so why
after all these years do all these
conspiracy theories persist our cover
story is reported by Susan Spencer spy
novelist Gail Linz has made an entire
career out of conspiracies
how many conspiracies do you think
you've dreamed up in your lifetime a
couple hundred for office at home near
Portland Maine is a breeding ground for
conspiracies its shelves filled to
bursting with evil secrets and nefarious
plots military technology special ops
war tactics strategy Wow do you have any
what's wrong with you her espionage
novels have sold millions of copies and
they all start with one unbreakable rule
hope you enjoy music the conspiracy has
to be believable that's not hard in fact
there are and have been genuine
conspiracies I shall resign the
presidency effective at noon tomorrow
there's Watergate there's iran-contra
they're wonderful to write about and
read and talk about we look for
conspiracies everywhere
according to a recent CBS News poll more
than half of Americans still believe
there was an official cover-up connected
to the assassination of President John F
Kennedy roughly one in three say the
government is hiding the truth about
9/11 and one in ten thinks the moon
landings were faked so if you want to
know how important conspiracy theories
are to people just bring up a few next
time you have Thanksgiving dinner with
your family
they do it after a few bottles of wine
and after the arguing is over you
probably won't be invited back the next
year 25 percent continue to think that
9/11 was a hoax Joseph Kosinski is a
professor of political science at the
University of Miami conspiracy theories
are ultimately about power there's never
a conspiracy theory about you know the
homeless guy with no arms and no legs
conspiring against us so how does a
conspiracy theory start a lot of times
what happens is people will just come up
with some of these ideas on their own
for example one of my favorites is that
the CIA created lesbianism Jews insky
gathered roughly 100,000 New York Times
letters to the editor a hundred and
twenty years worth dealing with various
conspiracy theories what we find is that
beliefs aren't really going up but what
we can say is that they're playing a
much bigger role in our political
discourse sometimes with potentially
tragic results after he became the
subject of conspiracy theories
billionaire George Soros was targeted by
a pipe bomber and critics of the
president worried that his views often
I wouldn't be surprised I wouldn't be
surprised I wouldn't I don't know who
but I wouldn't be surprised a lot of
people say yes what does your basic
conspiracy theorist look like if I ask
people to close their eyes and imagine
who that person is mm-hmm most of them
are gonna think of a white male
middle-aged look a lot like me
tinfoil hat perhaps living in the
mother's basement with a ham radio
but conspiracy thinking cuts across race
gender political party this vast
right-wing conspiracy that has been
conspiring against my husband since the
day he announced for president almost
everybody believes some kind of
conspiracy theory at some point
psychologist Rob Brotherton says human
beings are skeptical of coincidence and
think in terms of cause and effect the
one of the main jobs that our brain has
is to spot patterns in the world to spot
things where ie seems to be connected to
be and when something big happens like a
terrorist attack or a mass shooting we
assume there must be an equally big
explanation for it like the JFK
assassination a lone gunman
assassinating the president changing the
course of history that's a very small
explanation for such a big event we want
a much more complicated explanation than
there is like a vast conspiracy
involving hundreds or thousands of
especially since some experts believe a
JFK conspiracy is not out of the
question there's kind of good reason to
be suspicious of the Warren Commission
report it was kind of rushed mm-hmm and
it didn't cover everything it did leave
some things aren't more than half of all
Americans think there was a cover-up of
the Kennedy assassination I'm inclined
to think that there might have been at
the Mafia killed JFK I'm not sure it was
the Mafia maybe it was the Cubans maybe
it was the Soviet Union such theories
persist no matter how improbable a lot
of these depend on huge numbers of
people keeping us
secret so workplace romances fall apart
fairly quickly and that's to people with
low stakes for talking hundreds or even
thousands of people with very high
stakes information and it's been decades
and decades and decades but no one's
come forward to say I was the other
shooter and if you don't buy the JFK
series what about this guy is he alive
in this one you've seen those little
crawly things I'm this but we're big
curly things poor Paul McCartney has
been rumored to be dead since people
played Beatles records backwards in the
late 60s what is your all-time favorite
conspiracy theory so the
inter-dimensional lizards I think hard
is a good one in dimensional lizards I'm
not familiar with this one yeah so all
the rich families the monarchy all the
presidents are all related to these
transdimensional shape-shifting lizards
I'm looking at your eyes you might be
one of them by now
you two may be looking nervously over
your shoulder so how's the average
person supposed to distinguish any of
this well the best thing to do is to
listen to independent experts you know
that's not good nobody's gonna do that
you know we could start some sort of
rumor that you were actually a spy I was
never a spy what you would say that
conspiracy thinking is the spectrum some
of it is ludicrous and some is quite
reasonable governments do keep things
from us and perhaps for that very reason
professor use insky thinks a little dose
of conspiracy thinking actually may be
good for democracy conspiracy theorists
have for decades pushed for the release
of more documents relating to the JFK
assassination that's a good thing
conspiracy theorists push for the 9/11
Commission that was a good thing
a world without conspiracy theories
might be a very dangerous one because at
that point no one's able to question
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