By Paul Weiser
Strange are they ways of conspiracy theorists, and passing strange their theories. Many explanations have been advanced for this phenomenon - mostly for the purpose of dismissing conspiratorialism as a form of derangement - but seldom what seems the most obvious and best-understood mechanism.
Consider the well-known psychological mechanism of projection. This happens when a person sees in others’ character, beliefs and actions not what is actually there, but his own thoughts and acts projected on an opaque, reflective screen of his own imagining. Examples are almost too numerous to mention: burglars have the best doors and locks because they see everyone as out to burgle them; swindlers are paranoid about being swindled because they see everyone around them as being equally dishonest.
Now think about a range of conspiracy theorists right, left and center. The Branch Davidians thought a satanic conspiracy in the federal government was out to get them... they being a gnostic, conspiratorial little sect themselves. Hillary Clinton thinks there’s a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get her... and held her health-Sovietization conferences behind closed doors, limited to a small inner cabal. Democrat-favoring newspapers harp on a clandestine Rovian Republican working group... in an industry dominated by a handful of editors and a few thousand writers all willing to take their marching orders from the internal buzz of that relatively tiny hive.
The list could go on - secretive Arabs in their little secret circles project vast Jewish conspiracies, homosexuals in their enclaves project Christianist militias out to get them, circle-the-wagons blacks projecting white power structures. People who see themselves as uniquely knowing, who deal only with their own kind, those they know will agree with them, project conspiracies where none exist because they belong to conspiracies vast or tiny - but generally the opposite of knowing.
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