What's with the media's preoccupation with conspiracy theories?

We have discovered there are more articles about the phenomenon of conspiracy theories in the German media than before.

Or is this just another conspiracy theory?

If we were less lazy, we'd run a computer program to grab the number of publications on the topic in the past several years, put them into a graph and be done with it.

Are there more articles in the German media right now on the phenomenon? If there are, maybe in large part because of many reviews of a recent American book on the subject and also because the German "anti-islamization" movement Pegida has been throwing around the term "liars press" (Luegenpresse) to explain why the traditional media have relentlessly attacked them.

The most recent high profile German magazine comment on the phenomenon is in Der Spiegel. It is pretty decent as a spot light on Pegida and the German vaxxer movement, yes, they have an anti vaccination movement, too.

In our opinion, though, a few additional aspects on conspiracy theories merit attention. The first, and obvious one, is that so many outrageous conspiracies have been shown to be very real.

We can all come up with examples, right?

For example, when a few tree hugger friends of friends warned in the early 2000s that the new anti-terror measures would be used against environmental activists, the blogster dismissed this as a classic conspiracy theory. And was proven wrong.

Another aspect of the use of the term "conspiracy theory" has to do with its application to complete nut cases, xenophobes and con men. Focusing on these groups makes it easy to dismiss even scientifically valid questions as conspiracy theory.

The funniest thing, professional skeptics do not seem to do well when it comes to "debunking" conspiracy theories. The reason for this? Not sure, but it may have to do with them being so accustomed to being sharp observers and more intelligent than, say the maintenance worker who witnesses an explosion, that they cannot bear to open their minds later on.


The current crop of conspiracy theory explainers emphasizes the greater complexity of the world but fails to look back even a century or two.

In one of the many newspaper articles about the start of World War I last year, we saw a report about Russian spies being seen in our tranquil hills in the far West of Germany, complete with farmers armed with - yes - pitchforks forming a posse to hunt them down. As it turned out, the Russian spies were a German city couple going for a ride in their brand new car.

We seem to be happy to watch documentaries about witch hunts in Europe and the Americas without asking the question why such deadly conspiracies have been part of the fabric of our "modern" world.
It is great fun to browse odd web sites like http://galacticconnection.com. At the end of the day, if a previous president of the United States consulted with astrologers, don't many conspiracy theorists look relatively sane in comparison?

Once again, while "the media" are worried about conspiracy theories and point to the bad internet for troves of questionable or stupid material, we take a different view.

With a little bit of patience and time, it is a lot easier to figure out conspiracy theories today than at any point in the past.