I think we owe Jivehoney an apology!
I think not. That there is (and has been for a while now) credible evidence of a potential paedophile “ring” operating in London, including members who were high level parts of the “establishment” is given credence from a number of directions.
The issue people had in THAT thread is that the tinfoil hat brigade then extrapolate that and conclude that, if one conspiracy exists, then all the other conspiracies, with pyramids of masons and the Vatican under the guidance of the illuminati secretly controlling everything and every other nutjob conspiracy theory, from faked moon landings to the WTC coming down in a controlled demolition to capture of live aliens and exploitation of their technology at Area 51 are therefore also true.
Although at first glance this appears harmless, and we can all have a bit of a laugh at the credulous, imo it’s dangerous, unhelpful and (perhaps counter-intuitively) the “truthers” are helping the true conspiracies.
For instance, I understand (can’t arsed to look for credible backup for this, you can “do your own research” if you wish, I’ll call this a hypothesis for now) that there is some credence to the suggestion that the US (and potentially UK) governments have been happy to let just enough suggestion leak out there about covered up alien landings etc. to cover up the real secret military research that was being conducted. When the story is about crashed flying saucers and alien autopsies most people won;t believe it, if the story is about top secret military research, more people will buy into that.
Or, since there seems to have been, potentially, some naughtiness (lets say it’s somewhere between inappropriate interpretation of evidence and intentional lying) in the preparation of the “dodgy dossier” about WMDs in Iraq, that the tinfoil hat brigade then produce lurid stories about the murder of David Kelly, again linked to the Vatican, the illuminati, and the masons and involving in part the continued cover up of the fact that those at the top of the pyramid are actually alien shape-shifting lizards distracts and increases that chances that those of us who are less credulous will dismiss the whole lot – i.e. it’s not impossible to believe, if there’s credible evidence, that people in government might have been dodgy in pushing their agenda on Iraq. But not many people are going to buy it if the same narrative involves shape-shifting space lizards.
The problem with the conspiracy theorists is that there is no apparent critical thinking or weighing up of the evidence – they seem to believe that any and all wild conspiracy theories are true. That some of them are true only reinforces that view – if they were right about the WMD dossier and the paedophiles in Westminster then the alien lizard king must also be true, right? Wrong. And the converse is then also true – those of us who don’t buy into this kind of thing are likely to dismiss any and all allegations of conspiracy on the basis that, well, it’s just a conspiracy theory, isn’t it? Just because they’re after you, doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid.
And the result? Stuff like the serious allegations this thread was started in response to doesn’t get taken seriously, things are brushed under the carpet and those in the establishment who are corrupt (or worse) are more likely to get away with it.
