No event of significance in the world today – be it an unexpected election result, a terrorist attack, the death of a public figure, a meteorological anomaly, flu pandemic or phone hacking allegations – takes place without generating at least a flutter of conspiracy speculations. And that’s where the OU’s Dr Jovan Byford comes in…
Jovan’s a senior lecturer in Psychology at the Open University, specialising in the social and psychological aspects of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and Holocaust remembrance. He’s also studying the relationship between psychology and history.
Jovan’s first book Conspiracy Theory: Serbia vs. the New World Order was published in Serbian in 2006 and was based on his PhD thesis which examined the uncontrolled spread of conspiracy theories within the Serbian society in the 1990s.
His second book has just been published – Conspiracy theories: A Critical Introduction ¬– which explains conspiracy theories as a global phenomenon while exploring their political, historical and psychological dimensions.
In these two videos Jovan explains why conspiracy theories often sound alike, and how a conspiracy theory differs from an account of a real conspiracy…
Find out more:
- About Dr Jovan Byford
- Conspiracy theories: A Critical Introduction
- Jovan Byford on BBC's Thinking Allowed
- Study with the OU – Psychology
Comments
Question to Jovan Byford: In Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klien discusses disaster capitalism as a model for chaotic opportunism of world events by the Washington Consensus. Would you characterise her work as conspiracy theory?
I would like to ask the same question.
It seems that governments are very keen to take any disaster as the opportunity to implement new or previously rejected laws and policies. As such, they do not help themselves when it comes to the conspiracy theorist. A previously rejected law may sit on the bench for years, but when a suitable disaster strikes, the people cry out for it. (vis a vis, the patriot act and 9/11). It only takes the conspiracy theorist one logical step, ie. that the government created the disaster, to complete their theory.
As David Icke says "Problem, reaction, solution", and he does have a point. It is a well known method in advertising (ie. creating the disease halitosis in order to sell mouthwash), so it's entirely possible that governments and financial institutions will also do similar things.
Though Naomi Klein does not claim governments were responsible for the mainstream conspiracy theorist's theories, she does weave a very convincing story of US. foreign policy, subterfuge and manipulation of other countries in order to secure the US. economy.
Most importantly, perhaps, who decides - or gets to define and broadcast - what is a 'conspiracy theory' - and what is an 'inconvenient' truth which challenges the prevailing political or economic elite?
I am thinking of the examples of accusations of 'sexed'-up dossiers in the Blair government which were roundly denied - and later proven to be true.
Additionally, in the Arab Spring uprisings we have heard the speeches of Arab dictators claiming political activists and ordinary people were 'Al-queda', religious extremists or called 'rats' (by Gaddafi) - while Western news organisation were telling a very different story of social uprising against tryannical rule.
Perhaps some might draw links and observe some similarities with the political language used to describe the UK summer riots; where rioters were also called 'feral' criminals by the UK political elite, and the catalyst for the unrest (the killing of an unarmed black man by police) was edited out of later news coverage and the wider lengthy discussions on the reasons for the riots - mostly focused on 'criminality'.
Surely that tells us that conspiracy theories come from both the powerful - and the powerless? And similar tactics could be seen to be used globally to enforce compliance to the status quo and to distract attention away from injustice?