An epidemic of conspiracy theories is another sign of our time. Mass shootings become ‘false flags’ staged by governments. Teenage survivors telling their stories are dubbed crisis-actors. Attempts to censor these delusional rants are taken as proof of a conspiracy to bury the truth.
Mob hysteria, or Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI), has always been around, with a superstitious, fearful and powerless peasantry in days gone by susceptible to the spread of wild ideas. But it does seem to be worse at the moment, in part fuelled by an anti-government streak in the American psyche; as well as in other countries where governments undoubtedly do get up to no good.
The internet provides a welcoming series of echo chambers where lone wolves can meet kindred spirits, so the critical mass rises as they reinforce each others’ beliefs.
The Worldwideweb was launched in August 1991 under the Uranus Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, a Millenial event. Uranus Neptune has many positive attributes but one side effect can be to create emotional and psychic confusion; and contributes to an inability to digest rational evidence if it contradicts firmly held views. Pluto in Scorpio will also be at work, making for entrenched opinions, as well as deep and dark suspicions. Not that all conspiracy theorists are Millenials. Most high-profile ones are older, but without the internet they probably wouldn’t exist/or have much traction.
What is noticeable in both Alex Jones (Infowars) and David Icke’s chart is a Sun square Mars – they’re angry, especially at authority figures; father in childhood and father-figures (rulers) in adult life; as well as having an accentuated and rebellious Uranus close to their Moon.
You’ll have to forgive the psychobabble but paranoid personalities fascinate me. Leave aside for the moment ‘the paranoid is the only one who sees the truth’, of which more below. Paranoia occurs in the first months of life, when a helpless, highly anxious infant tries to cope with a mother, who can’t be on tap 24/7. So mother gets split into good (when she’s there) and bad (when she’s otherwise occupied). Negotiating this phase by understanding she’s both wonderful (idealised) and frustrating (loathed) is a step along the way to maturity, leading to mourning for the lost paradise and an acceptance of separation.
The paranoid feelings will recur through life, but for some, they remain stuck in this splitting stage where people are either all good or all bad. Usually what happens is they perceive the ‘bad’ to be those on the outside, while they protect their image of themselves as shining white. Them are irretrievably guilty; I’m morally upright. Trump? It’s an inability to develop complex thinking and feeling. People, even the good-enough parent, are a mix of pluses and minuses; as is the individual themself.
Out in the howling internet, one of the fallacies that such simplistic splitting leads to is ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ For example, the USA has got up to all manner of dirty tricks, so is bad; therefore anyone against the USA, for example Russia, has to be good. Rather than facing a variety of horrible truths; 1) there may be no goodies amongst rulers anywhere; 2) some are better/worse than others; 3) both will have positive attributes which are not negated by their bad behaviour.
Splitting does make life easier for a lazy mind – I’m right and you’re wrong. Rather than facing the uncomfortable fact that “genuine tragedies are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” (Hegel). That is not a conundrum that is easily assimilated.
None of which ignores the fact that governments in varying degrees at varying times act egregiously badly and manipulate the population. “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” (Goebbels) Or to carry out provocative acts and blame it on the other side to justify starting a conflict; of which there is copious evidence. See URL below.
But to move from an understanding that bad sometimes happens, to a mindset which is suspicious of every incident, even turning videoed mass shootings into ‘false flags’, is an indication of a pathology (illness).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/28/florida-shooting-conspiracy-theories-youtube-takedown
I now can’t find the post in which I mentioned the Scots disliking the English. I grew up in Scotland and lived there for several decades. I had an English friend at Glasgow University which had a fair cadre of Scottish Nationalists. She was constantly belittled because she came from Yorkshire. There was. When I moved to London one of them said to me – ‘why go there? It’s full of the English.’ In fact it wasn’t, but who cares? – Indian landlady and Czech and French neighbours.
The fact that Israel has constantly stoked up antipathy to the Palestinians doesn’t mean all Israelis dislike them; nor do all Americans hate Muslims or previously Communists/Russians. That doesn’t make it untrue.
Discussion closed.
@ Sue … ”Perhaps Marjorie should have said “Nationalist Scots”. Obviously not all Scottish people ‘hate’ the English, but the ‘YES’ campaigners seem to promote this attitude when trying to convince everyone to vote for Scottish Independence.”
I just noticed your post Sue and would say that I haven’t come across any Independence supporters being hateful towards English people either. Many people supporting independence now are in fact originally from England and many SNP politicians / councillors are English or have English spouses, such as Nicola Sturgeon’s depute is English, born in London. Many more have English relatives, such as Nicola Sturgeon’s maternal grandmother is English.
The problem, imo, is the fact that ALL newspapers in England support the Union (against the SNP) and in Scotland one daily newspaper only (the National) of around 40 supports independence. Not one daily newspaper in Scotland is owned or controlled by a Scot and Scotland with ”the most powerfully devolved Parliament in the world”, as per Westminster, doesn’t have control over broadcasting either. We don’t have our own public broadcasting service, unlike every other devolved or self-governing country or territory in Europe. I wonder why that is? Why won’t Westminster devolve broadcasting to Scotland?
You can see how many people could be duped by MSM propaganda. As an example Sky News ran an online poll of the 100 most influential women in the UK ahead of International Women’s Day. Nicola Sturgeon came in first with 43,000 votes, Mhairi Black SNP MP (youngest ever MP at Westminster) came in second with 24,000 votes and the Queen third with 23,000 votes. Was this reported in any English newspapers or on the BBC? Do they ever report that many English people have requested, believe it or not, that the SNP should have politicians standing for English constituencies because they prefer them to the Tories, Labour and Libdems?
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/2331643/nicola-sturgeon-mhairi-black-international-womens-day-poll-queen-jk-rowling-princess-diana/
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@ Buckeye … ”Weak tea, Petra. Everybody but you loves Marjorie. You’re always going to be challenged by her supporters when you take her on. This is her site, and it is an astrology site. Your over-long diatribes have nothing astrological about them. You just come on here to gripe.”
”Everybody but you loves Marjorie. You’re always going to be challenged by her supporters ..”
Grow up why don’t you, FGS. Has no-one to disagree with Marjorie, now and again? Marjorie’s big enough, smart enough, opinionated enough and long enough in the tooth to stand up for herself, imo. I visit this site because I ‘m interested in astrology and in what Marjorie has to say, the astrological slant, about current affairs and so on. She’s the best mundane astrologer around, however that doesn’t meant to say that I have to ”love her”.
”Love her work” … Yes.
As to my ‘diatribes’ having nothing to do with astrology, I see that your ‘diatribes’ vented against me on here fall into the same category. In fact not one of your posts has anything to do with astrology at all.
Perhaps Marjorie should have said “Nationalist Scots”. Obviously not all Scottish people ‘hate’ the English, but the ‘YES’ campaigners seem to promote this attitude when trying to convince everyone to vote for Scottish Independence.
@ Buckeye … “Scottish tweets.”
You’ll know they’re Scottish? People hiding behind a pseudonym? Just as hundreds of people professing to be English tweet Nicola Sturgeon every day threatening her with death, rape and torture. Are they English or do they come from much further afield?
And even if some of these people tweeting are Scottish does that justify castigating a whole Nation of people? To say that I’m disappointed with Marjorie’s comment about the Scots is an understatement.
Weak tea, Petra. Everybody but you loves Marjorie. You’re always going to be challenged by her supporters when you take her on.
This is her site, and it is an astrology site. Your over-long diatribes have nothing astrological about them. You just come on here to gripe.
“The Scots boost their machismo by being anti-English.”
Eh! I’m totally taken aback with that comment Marjorie. Of a population of just over 5 million around 8 hundred thousand English people have decided to settle in Scotland and as far as I can make out not one has complained about the Scots being anti-English at all. Many Scots have English relatives and friends and if there has been a few incidents why on earth would you want to tar a whole nation by making such a nasty, unfair and sweeping statement?
There’s no doubt that many Scots detest the Westminster Government in England due to, for example, being dragged into illegal wars that they’ve voted against and having nuclear weapons being dumped in Scotland against the vast majority of Scots and their Government’s wishes. That’s a detestation of a Government that the Scots didn’t even vote for, justified in my opinion, not English people per se: That’s the English people who seem to be extremely happy with the choice that they’ve made with many talking of / reporting in newspapers, and so on, that the Scots are friendly, kind, generous and helpful. Let’s face it if your description of the Scots is correct they’d surely move south again and the large numbers of English people relocating to Scotland would diminish rather than them moving to Scotland, currently, in ever increasing numbers.
To be honest I’d say that your comment that Scots “have to boost their machismo by being anti-English” is a load of tommy rot. Scottish men are renowned the world over for having a strong sense of their masculinity for any number of reasons, none of which relate to projecting their anger on to English people.
You say, “the paranoid feelings will recur through life, but for some, they remain stuck in this splitting stage where people are either good or bad.”
In light of what you have to say about the Scots maybe you should reflect on your own psychological analysis of being “stuck” and your own “bad”, in fact racist attitude, towards a whole nation of people. More so consider the negative impact such ridiculously narrow-minded and naive “feelings” can have through you being in the position to use the “howling Internet” as a platform to “fuel” bad feeling and promote devisiveness by attempting to influence others perception of over 5 million people, especially those who are “susceptible to the spread of wild ideas.”
Scottish tweets are notorious on the internet. Irascible, tart, downright rude—They are hilarious. Frequently highlighted on Reddit. These scottish lambs you’ve vigorously defended from a mere 8 words Marjorie wrote—they don’t need your help. In fact, they would fry you for it, gell.
I wonder if that “us vs them” identity has a lot to do with America’s Sun being in Cancer? Trump understood or perhaps played into that very well with his America first rhetoric. Hollywood was basically built on top of that – big budget movies about the “good guy” saving us all from the bad guy. Its innate.
@Buckeye, that’s interesting. I wish though that Americans had the parliament style debates, it may do well for the country – American politicians would have to try harder, read a lot more and learn a lot more to debate their points. Politicians here don’t appear to have much knowledge of what their legislating, its all based on where the money is coming from – no integrity. Their values (if they have any) could fly out the window in a heartbeat if their good guy image appears to be on the line.
Kitty, I agree that the British parliamentary system would be good for politics in the US. Also, the British judicial system. Both would be sensible alternatives to what we are bogged down with now.
Do you think the world of over-saturated reality tv that we live in and have been for the past 15-20 years also has something to do with the shaping of this kind of culture? I mean, reality tv stars/shows/storyline are forever being narrated to suit what they want to be shown and never the truth, the constant ‘hyperdrama’ and fake situations, etc? And yet, these shows and ‘zelebrities’ are increasingly popular and the brainless masses lap it up and aspire to be the same.
Here’s a good site to read studies about this: http://www.comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk. The Computational Propaganda Project at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
Their mission is “analysis of how tools like social media bots are used to manipulate public opinion by amplyfing or repressing political content, disinformation, hate speech, and junk news”.
Hi Marjorie
Where do you stand on 9/11? Is the official version largely a true account of what happened that day?
Roberts, whom I speed read, seems to think it was neo-cons who did 9/11 with explosives in the basement. He wasn’t too clear about who he thought they persuaded to do the kamikaze thing aboard the planes.
It’s not that I don’t think governments lie and manipulate. But I do know paranoia can be very infectious and before you can turn round everything is untrustworthy; and deemed a set-up job.
Sometimes things just happen and most of the time it can be sheer incompetence rather than conspiracy. Not 9/11 clearly.
My most favourite ever conspiracy theory is the moon landings filmed in the Arizona Desert.
Marjorie, you should watch the documentary film ‘Room 237’ in which various theorists come up with their unique and far-fetched interpretations of Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’, in particular the segment on the Apollo 11 moon landings and Kubrick’s alleged involvement in the faking thereof.
Love this Marjorie, very indepth analysis!
Just to add to that, I have always been fascinated by America’s fascination with a person being “Good” or “Bad”. Its even used in their everyday Lingo, for instance, “he’s a good guy” is meant to solidify a person’s reputation in an instant. You have people holding on tightly to anything that helps them maintain their “good guy” image and inevitably do whatever it takes to bury their “not so good” side; whether that’s suppressing their natural urges because it doesn’t fit the mold of a “good guy” or suppressing the truth of whatever “evil” they’ve perceived themselves to have committed, cos it messes with their “good guy” image. This applies to women as well.
This in fact is what I consider to be the underlying issue with all that’s wrong with America in general, things are either black or white, literally and metaphorically, and their politics is just a reflection of that mindset.
Kitty, you should watch British Parliament sessions. The Parliamentarians indulge in “across the aisle” insults and arguments that can be beyond the pale. They don’t confine it to the issues at hand either, but denigrate the opposition and individual opponents in a very personal way. The only thing that tops it is the Asian fistfights and mob scuffles in their representative sessions. American politics is actually tame, comparatively.
Since you used “black or white” thinking to label both Americans and their politics, I wonder if this means the British and Asian people have uncontrollable anger issues, mirrored in their politics? (Just shows you can’t paint everything with a broad coat of black or white. Their society is NOT represented by their political system! Their societies are polite and well-mannered, as a whole.)
I do think the USA has a peculiar quirk, which may come from being a nation made up of immigrants. They have to have a bad guy to hate outside their borders. It was the Commies for years and after the Berlin Wall fell down they were at a loss until the Muslims turned up. It’s a way of promoting internal cohesion and identity in a country. The Israelis do it to the Palestinians. The Scots boost their machismo by being anti-English.
All goes back to the same splitting as above. If the anger was taken inside it would be too destructive, so it has to be aimed outwards. The English can get verbally rough in Parliament, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. Perhaps being an island helps.
On a smaller scale, pitting East Coast versus West Coast helps that cohesion in Oregon and Washington. I’m “east coast Italian” and therefore represent the mean and terrible people of NYC. Finding work is problematic, and transplants inevitably are forced to move back East. “Treehuggers” in Washington abound, even flourish, because it helps them remain isolated from reality. If it was permitted, Oregonians and Wasingtonians would regularly engage in armed skirmishes across the Columbia River, such is the disdain and feelings of both toward the other. The mentality of the “native Oregonian” and the “Seattlite” are not that different.