Spike is Best

The ironic thing about conspiracism is that the many supposed threads the conspiricist supposedly connects leads to contradictory incoherence, and contradictory incoherence only reinforces the conspiricist impulse; it does not lead to a picture of the whole truth which demands your response in proportion to it.

Rather, there is a kind of circulatory constant carpet bombing of things taken more and more out of context, while the context is more and more replaced with that of the conspiricist's. This is to the conspiricist's benefit, as it is the means by which he absolves himself of the consequences of his speech and influence, and transmits this absolution to his disciples. One of the big attractions of conspiracism is that the receiver is not required to own the supposed truth to which he makes claims.

The truth is a door that opens for you to enter it, and entering it brings to light in you what hasn't been brought into the light, while bringing a new light to what has already been brought into the light. But it also makes a kind of ontological marriage, in that what light you have received requires your further truthfulness in keeping it - that is, your responsibility for it. Conspiracy theory warps this: it seeks to order reality before entering it.

But the Christian is called to form matter in this way: by entering into reality before ordering it. This is in fact the very way that God forms matter, by entering into it. This entrance declines any trace in one that smacks of mastery, of having figured things out. The great timeless miracle of the Christian is that he transforms and brings a greater good out of evil and harm, not by seeking to master it, but by entering into reality as a servant. We mirror the way God is working in us; indeed, God working in us is the very confidence by which we enter into reality before ordering it. Conspiricism shuts out God from working in one.

The notion that the conspiricist is one who follows the clues and signs to their ends is quite false; the conspiricist is forever picking them up and then abandoning them. Each time he picks them up, they are bit more distorted than before the last time he abandoned them. Conspiracy theories are the filthy suds left clinging to the sink from a paranoiac washing his hands of all the matter which constitutes reality. The real reason their patron saint is Pontius Pilate is because they love to imagine that Jesus is saying to them, "Theirs is the greater sin".

The malignant fruit resulting from their conspiracy theories (and conspiracy theories do indeed bear deadly fruit in reality) they can simply incorporate back into their constantly incoherent dramaturgy of conspiracy. He excuses himself with a swiffer of his own hand, saying that at worst all what will happen if he is wrong is that he will look like a fool (thus proving that his considerations extend only to himself).

The conspiricst sets up an alternate reality, saying that Jesus is not here in - you know - in reality. Especially not this reality. This is a version of "Look, the Messiah is out in the desert" of the false prophet.

There are people who, though they condemn the Rapture as heresy, actually believe and follow its core gnostic principle. They seem to think that God's grace and sacramental presence is a kind of rapture that takes them out of - has raptured them out of - the need to give attention to messy present matter which calls for one to enter into it before seeking to order it in order for the good to prevail in it. The conspiricist is one who seeks to embed the heresy of Rapture into the waking present.

We are rapidly entering the next phase of those who are sadly being herded under a libertarian ethos: the demonstrations, protests, vice-signalling, and so on, will become extremely fearful people taking offence at someone keeping their physical distance, and pouncing on them and beating them to death.

This is one of the fruits of conspiracism.