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Is the accusation of something being a "conspiracy theory" still a valid dismissal after Snowden?

• kazagistar 8y ago
  Or it was never a valid criticism on its own, but rather a shorthand to explain a toxic behavior pattern by certain people who would seek out all kinds of unsubtantiated nonsense regardless of merit (Lizard People, Illuminati, Social Marxism, etc). It's unfortunate that some people used it as a thought-terminating phrase against all conspiracies.
  • marnett 8y ago
    Do you mean Cultural Marxism? I haven't heard of Social Marxism before.
• Bartweiss 8y ago
  Usually the crazy part of conspiracy theories is that they invent a group that's doing something (Reptillians, the Illuminati, whatever), or describe something a real group couldn't possibly pull off (e.g. the CIA runs North Korea, the Bilderberg Group chooses who wins elections). Which makes it very weird to see people level that accusation against claims that an obviously-real group did an obviously-plausible thing, like "this agency that exists to gather information gathered a lot of information". Or in this case "this PR firm ran several articles to affect PR". Sure, it's a conspiracy in that they aren't admitting to doing it, but why is that surprising?