Conspiring against a convincing argument

A message to new world order believers

Dear “new world order” conspiracy believers: please stop preaching divisive propaganda and saying that it reflects the truth of the world. 

Although your movement’s persistence is admirable, the accusations are often assumptive, hypocritical and absolutist.

Even though it seems like it is based on good intentions, your reasoning is like a night out drinking gone awry. You suck a lot in but then it spews out all over the place, covering people you care about in vomit. 

It’s embarrassing. 

From the get-go, your believers use overly strong words with far too little empirical evidence to back them up. The prime culprit is your use of the world “evil.”

It is a powerful word and there are a lot of biases inherently carried with it. Yet, new world order activists use this word to describe a supposed powerful elite that is genetically related and is looking to create a one-world government global order. 

The advance of free trade in the global economy is “evidently” explicitly evil, as the imagined elite uses it as an excuse to create a one-world government to control humanity.

But you fail to see the consequences of this far-too-convenient reasoning to explain the elites’ psychological motivations for pursuing such policies. It is exactly the same reasoning that racists use to justify their hatred of another group.

It relies on “good and evil” reasoning that has been common throughout history and has had devastating consequences for humanity time and time again.

I could say that all politicians are evil beings that were forged by Satan on Venus and transported here through satellites. You don’t believe me? That’s because you have been brainwashed

Take, for example, the Nazis who believed that Jews were an elite, conspiring to funnel Germany’s riches for themselves and responsible for the economic and social turmoil of the post-First World War German economy.

The use of Jews as evil, as “the other,” allowed Nazis to convince the German people that if you didn’t believe their fascist policies it was because the Jews brainwashed you. 

This leads to the second worst part the new world order movement. Stop using the argument that if one doesn’t believe your accusations, then they have been brainwashed. That argument can be applied to anything and still have the same effect. 

For example, I could say that all politicians are evil beings that were forged by Satan on Venus and transported here through satellites.

You don’t believe me? That’s because you have been brainwashed. 

This is a framework by which the new world order movement attempts to make its case and needs to be abandoned if those involved wish to advance their cause. 

The worst part about it all is that the movement works so hard for social, political and economic issues but seemingly falters on its own passion. 

Fluoride in public water is an important public health issue, but you spoil it by using convenient reasoning that has been pursued many times before and has not ended well. 

Yet none of this is to say that conspiratorial beliefs are in themselves always flawed. It’s very important to question and search for answers that the government and media very seldom provide. 

It’s also important to reign yourself in and acknowledge that the man in the White House is a human being like you. Even Bill Clinton doubts that the United States put a man on the moon.

And to whoever spray-painted “INFOWARS.COM, KNOW THE TRUTH” on the billboard on Highway 12 near Ste. Anne: that was really lame.

Matt Austman is a politics student at the University of Winnipeg.

Published in Volume 65, Number 5 of The Uniter (September 30, 2010)

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