Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

  Works like this survive on vibes, and one of the vibes that they have to exploit is fear. Most of that fear is about changing the orthodoxy that the reader regards as “the default.” People hate change, especially Americans. An American will brag about surviving suffering rather than every question why they suffered in the first place. When the Communist/Socialists takeover (in Webster’s view these ideologies are the same), one of the cultural institutions that they target are the religious ones. From the perspective of the revolutionaries the reason that this is a necessary step is because religious institutions are part of the problem. The French revolution targeted the Catholic church because the Catholic church, at the time, was part of the oppression of the French peasantry. They not only blessed the Aristocracy they were inextricable from it. The Russian Orthodox church was the same. The Tsarist government was endorsed by the church and benefitted from it. What Webster lik...

We are treated to some long quotes by Lenin, the good one, the one that didn’t beat his wife and kid. The thing about Lenin is that he represents exactly the type of person that people like Webster hated: he was smart, educated, non-religious, anti-Capitalist, and Jewish (ethincally). He’s also quite the character in history. Lenin is the force of the Bolshevik revolution and an idealist willing to execute his position at nearly any cost. It’s hard to argue against Lenin aside from just disagreeing as well. He’s an idealist and moreso a true believer. So what, if anything is Webster going to do with him? Well, she’s going to just use his speeches to prove her point, what’s her point? That Bolshevism then is not Synidcalism, it is state Socialism, it is Marxism, it is Communism, in a word it is Babouvisme.” She’s arguing against something no one is saying. She quotes a twenty-line position of Lenin from one of his writings and then thinks that she’s breaking new ground by telling us t...

This chapter is titled “The Revolution of 1917;”   to which we assume our intrepid author means the Russian Revolution, the final toppling of the Romanov dynasty and the beginning of the USSR. This is the subject of the chapter, so it’s very odd that she writes the following, “ This is no the place to recount the story of the Russian Revolution, which is still too fresh in the minds of the public to need repeating…” If this is the case then why is the chapter titled this way? I have made the observation in my recounting of this book that no one really reads conspiracy books. They read the first chapter, which is also where the author has spent the most time crafting the book. The only reason to include a chapter titled “The Revolution of 1917” and then dismiss any need to actually write about that revolution is so it would seem that she did. If some hapless debunker asks, “well, what does she cover the Bolshevik Revolution?” the conspiracy believer can say, “Why yes, right here i...