Posted by Ken Waldron on January 17, 2021, 10:19 pm, in reply to "ken and willem"
"'Conspiracy theory'...it simply refers to someone who believes the real story is something radically different to what those in authority tell us."
No. The term is self explanatory. It refers to a theory of a conspiracy: not merely an alternative narrative.
-Conspiracies of various kinds happen all the time but by their very nature they are difficult to prove because conspirators tend not to give the game away or provide written evidence.
But theorising a conspiracy doesn't make it so and as Chomsky and others have pointed out in the Propaganda model often : "...in fact what seems to be conspiratorial behaviour is easily explained by natural market processes (e.g. use of common sources, laziness and copying others in the mainstream, common and built-in biases, fear of departure from a party line, etc.)."
You might believe in some form of Covid conspiracy: William seems to likewise, but I sorry I can't agree. And disagreeing with a conspiracy theory is not a conspiracy theory itself: that's about the dumbest oxymoron you have managed so far.