I have only thoroughly studied one conspiracy theory, the so-called Satanic Ritual Abuse: a moral panic that swept through English-speaking countries in the early 1990s and put innocent people in jail for incredible crimes. When I used to comment on child abuse forums, I found it disturbing that one of my closest colleagues believed such lunacies.
If someone were to read my autobiographical series, he would realise that it is an odyssey of the spirit. Having been born into a Catholic family I passed into an amorphous Christianity as a teenager, and after a family tragedy I fell into a neo-Christian sect that I abandoned after a few years only to surrender my worldview to the paranormal. After reading the sceptics (of which Nicholas Humphrey was only one of them) I began to see the tremendous damage that the religion of my parents had represented in my young mentality. A series of autobiographical books that I started at the age of twenty-nine, and that ended at sixty-one, made me see the world as that old man entwined in the roots of a tree who has been living in the past, as in the fiction of George R.R. Martin.
I said that the sceptics of the paranormal helped me out of a cognitive swamp. But a good percentage of racially conscious whites have not delved into the labyrinths of their own being and their past, at least not at the level of the mummified old man. One way to start doing it is to adhere to the most elementary common sense. If you’ve read conspiracy books about the JFK murder, for example, it’s time to listen to the prosecutor who refutes them—not to leave the courtroom as I have so often complained! The same can be said about the 9/11 attacks and so much conspiracy theory that many racially conscious whites believe religiously, including those who make wild hypotheses about the covid-19.
In The Return of Quetzalcoatl (translated in Day of Wrath) I present in the most didactic way possible the concept of paleologic thought: an antediluvian form, so to speak, of human cognition as opposed to the Aristotelian logic that should govern our intellects. One way to spot who is using paleologic forms of cognition is to simply find out how much that person can tolerate cognitive dissonance; for example, how much can a believer that Oswald didn’t act alone face Bugliosi’s book. The sad truth about the racialist community is that many are not thinking logically, as are totally unable to listen to the other voice. And they are incapable because, psychogenically, they are more immature than the three-eyed crow.
I am not asking you to read my books. But if you could at least begin to familiarise yourself with the most hilarious literature of logical writers (*), a gigantic step towards the repudiation of conspiracy theories would be taken.
In the case of the covid-19, even though Hunter Wallace has been promoting the very logical videos by Chris Martenson, several commenters still come up with lunatic theories. I bet they haven’t even watched some of Martenson’s videos about the virus. As I have already said, I’ve noted similar behaviour in Kevin MacDonald’s webzine commentariat. And now I find out that some commenters also say crazy things about the Chinese virus in Counter-Currents to which Greg Johnson recently replied:
Responding to lunatic commenter #1: I see no credible evidence that the virus is not a serious threat. And connecting it with 5G? That strikes me a simple lunacy.
Responding to lunatic commenter #2: When there’s a global crisis, there are plenty of leftist and globalist megalomaniacs who will try to exploit it for their aims. Bill Gates and Henry Kissinger being two prominent examples. But that is no excuse for paranoid ideation from the conspiratard community, which just taints reasonable attempts to block bad policies.
Responding to lunatic commenter #3: This is precisely the form of Right-wing denialism that I reject as false and harmful.
Responding to lunatic commenter #4: This is the sort of Right-wing denialism that I completely reject. I have not changed my mind on it at all.
Responding to lunatic commenter #5: You are completely wrong about this, and so is [Andrew] Anglin.
By the way, in his article today, Hunter Wallace says: ‘The conspiracies are getting more complex. If you don’t believe in the conspiracy, then you must be part of the conspiracy’. He’s referring to the hard-right WN truthers of course.
When I was in the process of disabusing myself, this was precisely what I had encountered in other conspiracy theories, not just Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) but at a 1994 conference where I listened to the UFO sceptic Phil Klass. SRA or UFO theorists are so incapable of tolerating the idea that you can honestly disagree with them, that they have no choice but to think that the sceptic is part of a sinister conspiracy.
But Wallace hasn’t studied conspiracy theories from the POV of paleologism. He even says that NY alone has more covid-19 cases than any country. If he paid attention to the Martenson videos he advertises, he would know that the Chinese statistics are propagandistic: commie stats that under no circumstances should be trusted.
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(*) Among all the sceptics who helped me heal from paleologic thinking, Martin Gardner’s articles in The Skeptical Inquirer were a real treat from a literary point of view. It’s amazing how they make you laugh! Whoever wants to get started in the mysteries of the three-eyed raven’s cave would do well to add the following books by Gardner to his bookshelf: Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus (1981), The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (1988), On the Wild Side: The Big Bang, ESP, the Beast 666, Levitation, Rainmaking, Trance-Channeling, Seances and Ghosts, and More… (1992).