I think the latter page is especially useful and both pages should be incorporated into every high school student's curriculum. Now that an unnamed orange muppet with tiny hands has announced he will run for POTUS in 2024, the page may become a lot more useful to help young people navigate the increasingly murky info-sphere.
I say that half-kiddingly. I genuinely applaud the fact that the EU finds conspiracy theory a serious enough topic that it needs to be confronted head on.
After the Stateside events of January 6th, (there's that sandy-haired orange muppet again), more people are taking note. Conspiracy theory has been leading to moral panic, and even violence, since the Romans accused Christians of: plotting to bring down the empire; cannibalism: conducting ritual orgies....probably even before.
Once Christendom had in effect supplanted the Roman Empire as the warp and woof of Europe (the Romans were right!), the unfortunate target of the conspiracy-fueled mob has more often than not been the Jews. Which is something the EU page notes; conspiracy theory is often crypto-antisemitism.
The name of the players may change, but the elements of moral panic have remained the same since the Middle Ages: medieval blood-libel, the "Rosicrucian furore", the Illuminati, anti-Masonry, Satanic Ritual Abuse, QAnon.
These elements include powerful, hidden elites; black magic and/or Satanism; trafficking children for ritual sex and murder; an international or even global reach....
QAnon is a political force the orange muppet openly toys with. Whether he believes it or not is irrelevant. Many of his supporters do, and it's one reason he wins their votes.
Democracy can't function when lies and conspiratorial thinking dominate the agora. Or as the WaPo has put it since the reign of the muppet: "Democracy Dies in Darkness.". D-D-i-D, yo!
I recommend reading the EU's pages and the downloadable PDFs they make available. We really may need them in the run-up to 2024. And maybe even beyond.
I know that global elites working behind the scenes for their own benefit do exist. By definition, two or more people working illegally for their own ends is a conspiracy. I would say that in the spheres of business and politics "conspiracy" in it's widest sense is as much the rule as it is the exception. I also know, thanks to Epstein, that billionaire sex-trafficking exists. But it ain't Squid Game.
One could say, with or without irony, that the diffusion of outlandish conspiracy theories is itself a kind of disinformation campaign to make people so leery of anything hinting at conspiracy that they just roll their eyes at the very mention of illegal shenanigans in high places; so their crimes are hidden in plain sight.
I got that reaction when I wrote a paper about the connection between Freemasonry and Scouting. It sounds so loony that some people refused to read beyond the title for what is a rather sober and well-documented paper.
Anyway, this started out as a simple link to the EU site and as usual has morphed into another LoS prolixity. And there isn't even a photo!
