Covid vaccines, chemtrails, the Great Reset … Why do people invent false conspiracies when there are so many real ones to worry about? There’s only one way to find out: ask a believer
I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that groups of people conspire secretly against our interests to line their pockets, cover their backs or achieve political goals. By this definition I suspect you are, too. We see evidence of these conspiracies every day. We see them in the Horizon scandal, in which the Post Office kept prosecuting innocent operators. We see them in the government’s use of a “VIP” lane for procuring PPE from friends and donors at extortionate prices. We see them in the Windrush scandal, in which people were denied their legal rights and unlawfully deported by the UK government. In the Cambridge Analytica scandal: a secretive micro-targeting campaign likely to have influenced the Brexit vote. In the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers, showing how the ultra-rich hide their money from taxes and legal scrutiny.
All these are conspiracies in the true sense: hidden machinations that advance particular interests while causing harm to others. A theory is a rational explanation, subject to disproof. If you accept these scandals are the result of hidden machinations, which they evidently are, you are a conspiracy theorist.
