And what is the most potent antidote to them?
During the coronavirus, various extraordinary theories were widely spread worldwide, of which the most shocking was the following. According to this theory formed in the USA, birds have long since disappeared worldwide. What flies in the sky are exclusively drones.
During COVID-19, the “lockdowns” were applied because the batteries of those UAVs were dead, and there was a problem of recharging them. That’s why they didn’t let people out on the street; otherwise, when they went out, they would see no “birds” (in fact, drones) in the sky.
When the social card system was introduced in Armenia in 2003, there were authoritative groups in some circles in our country who convinced the public that they would “chip” people in this way, and the numbers written on the social cards would be compiled after some arithmetic operations the satanic number “666”. These are two of the thousands of conspiracy theories that have been, are, and will continue to exist worldwide. They are based on three beliefs. One/ all phenomena in the world are interconnected, 2/ nothing happens by chance, 3/ all simple and understandable explanations are lies, and conspirators invent them to hide their secret plans. (Read more about it in the book “The Russian Culture of Conspiracy” by Ilya Yablokov.)
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Conspiracy theories “easily” explain why this or that disaster or disaster occurs. If we are dealing with a conspiracy, it is unlikely that a secret (semi-secret) group aims to improve life. If we do not take into account the minor exceptions, then we can only speak of the opposite: that group is doing something terrible and harmful and continues to do so; its purpose is to gain power at the cost of making life more difficult for ordinary people or to make the existing government more terrible. The “protagonists” of this theory are usually hated nations, states, or hated social groups.
Recently, these two types of “enemy” are common. For example, the Russian “official” theory is as follows today. In 2014, the West staged a bloody coup in Kyiv to bring the Nazis to power and destroy Russia. Ukrainian “mirror-like” theory: For centuries, the Russian Empire oppressed and colonized the Ukrainians, and now they can create a purely Ukrainian state, ridding it of colonial influence.
The “official” conspiracy theory in modern Armenia. “For 30 years, the rich (Karabakh people) robbed and humiliated the Armenian people, and now it’s time to take revenge on them.” Usually, such theories are characterized by extreme populism, which contrasts the good, kind, somewhat naive, but very pure people with the evil, greedy, insidious elites. Moreover, this can happen not only in poor and authoritarian countries. Donald Trump’s entire rhetoric was based on that very contrast. Let’s remember, for example, how he constantly threatened to “drain the Washington swamp.”
Conspiracy theory about the origin of the Third Republic is quite common among the “semi-intellectual” age “50+” in Armenia. According to that, the Jews, Freemasons, and the West, who destroyed the Soviet Union, brought to power in Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan, whose goal was to deprive Armenians of their national identity. But today, that theory is not “mainstream” because the government encourages, one might say, the opposite theory. That is, behind the war, defeat, closing of the Berdzor Corridor, and any opposition movement within the country, Russia stands, the goal of which is to deprive Armenia of its sovereignty.
We also have an “opposing” theory. In 2018, the West and Turkey organized a change of power to destroy the statehood of Artsakh and Armenia. Whether that theory is true, I don’t know. (Typically, the approaches outlined above take some element of reality and ignore dozens of other factors.) It is evident that Armenian Statehood is on the verge of disappearing in the South Caucasus. Whether it is the result of a conspiracy is hard to say.
In most cases, there is no doubt that a conspiracy exists, but it is unclear who it is. The terrorist attack of October 27, 1999, is such an example. Who was behind that conspiracy against our state? Again, I don’t know. It is known from the history of special services that the professionals included in them choose a particular psychological type to achieve their goals: people whose ambitions reach the sky and who, on the other hand, have no moral inhibitions. Work is carried out with just such people, who sometimes do not even understand that they are being “programmed” – ambitions blind them. Such professionals are in special services in Europe, the USA, Russia, Turkey, and many other countries. In this particular case, I am still determining who was working. “I do not know”:
As paradoxical as it sounds, those two words are the primary “antidote” to conspiracy theories. When a person admits that he does not know the whole material, does not put him in the position of omniscient, and is not forced or does not want to have and express his “authoritative” opinion on every issue, he is protected from the conspiracy theory. Incompetent opinions are based on fantasies, stereotypes, and prejudices. When you realize that you shouldn’t express such an opinion, you are also wary of the views expressed by other people.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
“Aravot” daily, 12.09.2023
