Now there is a pernicious and pervasive way of thinking which looks for conspiracy everywhere.
As a way of looking at the world it isn’t new, and can be traced back to those who wile away the wasted hours seeking to disapprove that there ever was a moon landing, to the sinister Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a fabricated antisemitic text, and runs back into the mists of time.
All that is needed is an event which someone will seek to deny, or bend to their own political purposes.
Only last week I encountered the assertion that the Covid virus was not real, but when challenged with the evidence, the individual deftly switched tack and argued that it was in the interests of “them” to manufacture the scare, thereby to increase the powers of State surveillance, or manipulate the international markets.
We have all encountered such conversations and attempting to refute them is like counting the grains of sand in a bucket or pushing water up hill.
Not that there haven’t been real conspiracies, only that the default line of many is to see them where they don’t exist, and trade on assertions and half-truths.
All of which is a lead into a new series on the wireless on How They Made Us Doubt Everything which is “the story of how doubt has been manufactured”. *
Running over 10 episodes "the series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change.
With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything.
Producer: Phoebe Keane for BBC Radio 4
Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev”.
So, there you are, I shall listen to all 10 and report back …. That is providing you believe what I write.
Pictures; a contemporary drawing of the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, and a popular badge from the 1970s
*How They Made Us Doubt Everything; Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q0
All that is needed is an event which someone will seek to deny, or bend to their own political purposes.
Only last week I encountered the assertion that the Covid virus was not real, but when challenged with the evidence, the individual deftly switched tack and argued that it was in the interests of “them” to manufacture the scare, thereby to increase the powers of State surveillance, or manipulate the international markets.
Not that there haven’t been real conspiracies, only that the default line of many is to see them where they don’t exist, and trade on assertions and half-truths.
All of which is a lead into a new series on the wireless on How They Made Us Doubt Everything which is “the story of how doubt has been manufactured”. *
Running over 10 episodes "the series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change.
Producer: Phoebe Keane for BBC Radio 4
Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev”.
So, there you are, I shall listen to all 10 and report back …. That is providing you believe what I write.
Pictures; a contemporary drawing of the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, and a popular badge from the 1970s
*How They Made Us Doubt Everything; Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q0
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