Conspiracy theories? No one does it better than West’s elite
Source: rt.com
For a long time elite establishment gatekeepers in the West have scoffed at that those who claim Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned. As to those who claimed he was poisoned by Israel - well-of course they’re crazy conspiracy theorists!
Yet these same people who ridiculed the idea of Arafat’s poisoning are, by and large, the same people who assert, without any shadow of a doubt, that the murdered spy Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned by the Russian authorities in London in 2006.Now we still don’t know for sure that Arafat was poisoned, or that Israel was responsible, but after last week’s news that Swiss scientists have found levels of polonium-210 18 times higher than normal in his exhumed body, it is much harder for these elite gatekeepers to haughtily dismiss as ‘cranks’ those who maintain that Arafat was murdered.
What the Litvinenko and Arafat cases show us is that there are officially ’approved’ conspiracy theories and those which do not receive official approval.
The labeling of people as ‘conspiracy theorists’ by gatekeepers in the West has nothing to do with how much evidence there is to support a claim or the quality of that evidence, but is a political call, based on who the conspiracy theory concerns and who is making it.
Establishment gatekeepers are not objective judges, but are heavily biased and label any idea they don’t like as a ’conspiracy theory’. Labeling someone a ’conspiracy theorist’ is their standard way of declaring that person to be ’off-limits’, i.e. he/she is an unreliable source and a ’crank’. It’s a way that dissent and debate is stifled in what appear to be free, democratic societies - and how people who challenge the dominant establishment narrative are deliberately marginalized.
Yet the greatest irony is that in the last 20 years or so, the biggest pushers of conspiracy theories have been these very same Western elite politicians and establishment gatekeepers so quick to accuse others of peddling conspiracy theories.
They were the ones who pushed, with great zeal, the conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had WMDs in 2003. This was one which had real, deadly consequences, leading to a blatantly illegal war and the deaths of at least 500,000 people. These elite gatekeepers have also pushed the conspiracy theory that Iran has secretly been developing nuclear weapons - again without producing any compelling evidence. This conspiracy theory has led to the imposition of draconian sanctions on the Islamic Republic, which have caused great suffering to ordinary people.
This year, these establishment conspiracy theorists have been at it again, claiming with great conviction that it was the Syrian government which launched a chemical weapons attack at Ghouta, even though we still don‘t know for sure who was responsible.
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Read the full article at: rt.com
