The "Conspiracy Theory" Label is Intentional Gaslighting

There are some very wild conspiracy theories, and certainly not all of them are true. Before I even continue, I need to clarify a very important point.

While it's unlikely in any particular case that "everyone is in on it," it's very easy for people to be manipulated. For example, every individual journalist doesn't need to be directly involved with a group trying to cover up a particular scandal to be coerced or otherwise manipulated into going along with a pushed narrative. They don't even need to be aggressively manipulated or blackmailed, but simply influenced by higher ups while seeking promotions and recognition, or cultural status in general. These are typically referred to as "useful idiots," whether or not they are truly unintelligent people, this phrase reflects their relationship to the "ones in charge." They are tricked one way or another into simply doing the gruntwork of the ones "pulling the strings."

(I'd like to take a quick segue and point out that "the ones pulling the strings" are not necessarily, in this case or any other case, some kind of diabolical supergroup that secretly controls every aspect of society worldwide. No, think smaller - a group of people doesn't have to be supervillainly bent on world domination to have useful idiot minions. This can occur in very small groups - say, a church, that starts down a path of becoming cult-like, lead by simply one or several "people pulling the strings" who wind up influencing enough people to lead the whole of the church into cultality (new word, copyright pending). The influence of the string-pullers is wide enough that anyone who still fights against it leaves or is pushed away one way or another, while only the "true believers" remain, until everyone involved - from the higher ups to the door greeters - are "drinking the Kool-Aid" of the new cult-order, many of them simply believing in it innocently and without malicious intent. Thank you, moving on then.)

It should not be difficult to believe this "trickle down influence" effect, as it happens on both sides, and it happens everywhere. It's observable real time. To disbelieve this is more crazy than believing it - it's already been researched and found valid that people will often change their views to align with their ingroup, rather than allow their beliefs to influence who they associate with as their ingroup. It is why so many people of every ideological persuasion tend to have at least a few contradictory beliefs, or beliefs they have trouble justifying if put on the spot suddenly. They have simply adopted them as part of their belief system due to association with the ingroup without thinking about it. Some choose to double down and perform some mental gymnastics when their hypocrisy is exposed, while others may actually take some time to rethink their position. Some may simply resign to holding onto their contradictory beliefs because they do not want to lose their status, wealth, or power they have gained within their ingroup. Yet others may simply flash a thumbs up and keep quiet when they know something is wrong, hoping they will just be left alone to live their lives.

Following this understanding of how group think mentality can easily overtake an entire organization (a church, or a news station), it should not be difficult to concede that, by all accounts, it appears most long standing news organizations have adopted quite a bias toward an ingroup mentality that primarily leans toward the left. These things trickle down - it doesn't matter if it's political bias, or the manner in which a company is being run, if the people in charge desire the people below them to kowtow, they will find a way. Allow me to regale you with an example from my own life.

I worked at a fast food restaurant where a grossly incompetent person became the general manager due to a variety of circumstances that worked in their favor. This person had connections to organizations that are tied to fast food service, and nepotism is quite real. It became a "conspiracy theory" in my work to believe that this person had obtained and retained their position due to their connections and also due to the unwillingness of the person who put them there to admit that they made a mistake. When employees complained about this manager, they were accused of exaggerating and of simply "having a grudge," because they had been there for many years and "just didn't like" the new way this person managed. I was told frequently that "no one likes their boss." I liked my many of my bosses, oddly enough. All of the lower management was great, and my previous general managers were wonderful. This was textbook gaslighting.

Of course, it was very true that this person was incompetent and had retained their position due to several factors unrelated to their ability to manage. The store tanked and people quit left and right. New hires were made to replace these people, and they were indoctrinated into believing that the store was just fine, and any stories from the few employees "from the old days" who tried to tell them that the store used to be much better off were squelched as "disgruntled employees" and our justified anger was slandered as anything you can imagine - jealousy, narcissism, romantic attachment to previous managers - literally anything they could get away with to erase the former history of our store as a shining beacon of cohesive leadership and superb performance. On one occasion we somehow managed to hire a girl who had worked under this same manager at a different fast food restaurant (her interview was with the assistant manager, on a day when the general manager was not in). She confirmed that this person had always been miserable at managing, and entirely unsurprisingly, this girl had quit that job due to this manager. She quit at my restaurant within two weeks.

It was evidently provable that the store had become worse under this person's management. There were receipts to show how well off the store used to be, and how bad it was now. We would get raises every year based on how much our overall sales and profit increased from the previous years - for four years, we always got raises. We stopped getting raises under this new manager who tanked the store. Anyone who was "in a management position" got quarterly bonuses based on our individual store's profits, compared to other stores in our district. We stopped getting those. Our delivery and catering sales plummeted and we lost many long time contracts. Even our in store sales went down, and long time customers stopped coming, their long history of good service with us not able to withstand the new, terrible experiences. The evidence was plain as day to anyone who wanted to pay attention.

The higher ups, the ones "pulling the strings", simply denied all these things were even happening, or if they could not deny them, they blamed it on other factors and continued to turn a blind eye to the obvious rot on the system - the new general manager.

It does not have to be political. I was accused of being a "conspiracy theorist" in a fast food restaurant for refusing to back down on the self-evident truth that our new general manager was abusive and incompetent. Our district management engaged actively in attempting to gaslight their employees into believing the problems were anything other than the new general manager who screamed at us constantly and just so happened to be the child of a person who was in charge of a very significant organization utilized by nearly every fast food company in the USA. Outrageous, they said, for us to believe they would keep a poor manager due to an unfathomably important connection to an influential company that directly affected our ability to stay open.

This happens everywhere. To believe it does not happen in something as high stakes as political parties - who fight for levels of wealth, power, influence, and status unfathomable to us common peasants - is intentional ignorance. It was impossible to continue to bear the stress of the madness at my fast food job, and I quit without a backup job lined up. We cannot simply "quit" our country so easily, so we have to continue day in and day out enduring active gaslighting by "the ones pulling the strings" that the problems we see in our country as simply due to a vast number of other, unrelated issues.

The average person wants very hard to believe that this simply isn't true, because it is not easy to accept and digest the truth that people with the power to bulldoze our lives are operating under malicious intent and we are simply unfortunate pawns in their way on a mad quest for power. This is why these things get labeled "conspiracy theories," as a way to allow the common rube to feel a little less anxious, to calm down a bit, to believe at least someone is "on their side," and that they are not simply foam in the waves of the sea, subject to the violent whims of the ocean to crush them against the rocks at their discretion.

Backing up to my previous claim that it's self-evident that many news organizations have adopted a politically left leaning bias - this is very important in the grand scheme of the title of this article, which if you don't feel like looking up, is "The "Conspiracy Theory" Label is Intentional Gaslighting". Since the media and the "pop culture" of the nation leans left, it's very important to do two things - label everything that doesn't lean left a conspiracy theory, and then call all conspiracy theories "right wing" or "extreme right" theories.

There are conspiracy theories that are absolutely wild. Frankly, I don't disbelieve entirely that there isn't some truth to many of them, but the issue at hand that causes some conspiracy theories to truly delve into the impossible is a lack of nuanced thinking. Some people believe that Donald Trump is going to oust all the pedophiles, which are inexplicably all Democrats, and save all the children. That theory has a lot going for it, most importantly because it has a happy ending. It would surely be great if it were true that we were going to permanently end the vile practice of trafficking children, who would want it to NOT be true? I suppose someone complicit, a trafficker or a pedophile. And thus, anyone who says it's not true is, by the conspiracy theorist adherents, a likely pedophile. It's very easy to get sucked into a thought process that lacks nuance, and it's happening to a large number of people.

But what happens is conspiracy theories like this, or that the earth is flat, are all "conspiracy theories," and thus very likely true "conspiracy theories" are lumped into the same bin as "the entire news media conglomerate in the entire world is acting in cohesive malicious intent to subvert the entire world into a New World Order" and then subsequently disregarded as obtuse and unbelievable.

Here's where nuance comes into play. Here's an example: there doesn't NEED to be one singular large cohesive group of evil people all in charge and working together for a "New World Order" to come into play. As it happens, very dramatic changes in governance can occur due to a variety of powers all working AGAINST one another. The "NWO" conspiracy theory becomes far more believable if you posit that, due to a large amount of conflict between a large amount of nations who all disagree vehemently with one another, a shift in power could easily occur wherein the typical operation of the way the world works today could be altered dramatically.

But such nuance isn't allowed in the "conspiracy theory" label camp. Many useful idiots continue to believe in a supervillain level cohort of mastermind evil geniuses who have infiltrated and run every aspect of all world governments, and whenever anyone says "hey this much more nuanced possible view that creates the same outcome is actually pretty believable," they are labeled an extreme right wing conspiracy theorist. Gaslit in real time into believing that their observations and opinions on the trajectory of things is "just wild nonsense". They double down and truly do become "conspiracy theory nutjobs", they stop believing it altogether out of fear of the conspiracy theorist label, or they hopefully maintain a nuanced, level-headed thought process about the whole thing.

Now, importantly, this isn't about "all the democrats and progressives are working together to gaslight conservatives!" It's not about me pushing my aforementioned more nuanced and more possible "conspiracy theory" as definitely true. It's about the fact that regular people, unaffiliated with any large shadowy cabal of unfathomably rich and powerful people, can cover for the true scandals of those rich and powerful, due to phenomenons as simple and easily manipulable as culture, group think, and ingroup status. I'm not even saying that what I have stated is THE true scandal - the important thing to grasp from understanding the possibility of a more nuanced view of the corruption everpresent in the elite canopy of society, is that ANY questioning of the veil of benevolence and well-meaning operation of the elite class is slandered and torn apart by the very people who should be outraged along with us.

It doesn't matter so much what is the "truth" behind the obvious questionable behavior of politicians and elites. If it's a satanic pedophile cult or simply a bunch of monkeys fighting for more power than their political peers and stepping on a bunch of us on their way up, the fact of the matter is that our earnest attempts to join together against the corruption are intentionally scattered under gaslight tactics such as "conspiracy theory" and "extreme right wing groups" labels.

Even your typical conservative does not want to be thought of as "extreme right wing," especially since we are constantly gaslit to believe being "extremely right wing" is synonymous with genocide etc., and thus they break up even the cohesion between people of their own ingroup. There are more or less political "schisms" breaking up the already flawed and subversive "liberal vs. conservative" mindset into ever smaller and smaller ingroups (yes, on the left, too), who spend their time fighting each other instead of finding ways for the peon-class to join together and recognize that - one way or another, something is not right.

In the end, it's not important so much that the media and culture is "left leaning" as it is that they have taught us to despise one another as "too different to get along," thus labeling things they don't want their ingroup to believe in as "right wing". If the media and culture were right leaning, the same thing would be happening, but with a different ingroup of peasants believing that the benevolent political powers - the ones in control of wealth and power inconceivable to the common person - are oh-so-honorably fighting for THEM.

Which is, of course, a lie.