Image by Wally Glenn. Used under a CC licence.
We’ve featured Jim Corr’s conspiracy ramblings on here before. Self-appointed moral guardian of the nation, Corr has re-surfaced to explain to us how ‘they’ are engineering the Irish financial collapse. As you watch, keep an ear out for some of the classic tropes of a conspiracy theorist. Here’s your checklist:
- Claim that the conspiracy theorist was right all along – when no-one would listen
- Claim that attacking the speaker is an attack on all free thinking people
- Reference to shady, unnamed forces working to destabilise the country – without any specification of who is doing it. The classic ‘they’ at the heart of conspiracy theories
- Quasi-messianic tone: ‘My dear people…’
- Syllogistic reasoning
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Blather, Rinse, Repeat: An Ethnography of Conspiracy Theory
Damien DeBarra was born in the late 20th century and grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He now lives in London, England where he shares a house with four laptops, three bikes and a large collection of chairs.