2012 And The New Wave Of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory

(image by spike55151, used under a Creative Commons license)

The Birthers, Truthers and Teabaggers may be getting the headlines, but for pure unadulterated lunacy they don't hold a candle to the new wave of anti-semitic conspiracy theorists. Don't believe us? Take a gander at this...

Rummaging around in conspiracy theories can be a testing thing. You try to keep a calm head, try to remain objective and, above all else, make no judgements: retaining what Keats called a condition of 'negative capability':

'...when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'

But, as recently discussed in my talk 'Blather, Rinse, Repeat: An Ethnography of Conspiracy Theory', this is proving increasingly difficult in recent times. But why? Have the Birthers, the Truthers and other right-wing US-based lunatic fringes jumped the shark so spectacularly that you just want to scream until your head bursts?

Not really - there's nothing that new in the foaming-at-the-mouth racism which runs through the Birther movement, or the wilfully myopic view of the world taken by many 9/11 Truthers. What is new, however, is the increasingly open, increasingly insane assertions of the anti-Zionist conspiracy theorists. Consider the following video:

Let's run the checklist, shall we?

Sinister spooky music? Check.
Repetition of claims from the widely discredited 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'? Check.
Moonbat, hysterical claims about Jews? Check.
Construction of 'narrative' from highly selective 'facts' and 'figures'? Check.
Complete misunderstanding of what Zionism actually is? Check.
Assertion that you can't believe anything anyone says except the person making the assertion in this statement? Check.
Anonymous posting of content to ensure that your absurd racist statments can't be tracked back to you? CHECK.

Video found at http://c.onspiracy.com/