The Hidden Forces That Promote Conspiracy Thinking About Mass Killing

By Dean Weingarten

The Hidden Forces That Promote Conspiracy Thinking About Mass Killing
Dean Weingarten
Dean Weingarten

Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- The explosion of conspiracy theories accompanying the mass killing in Las Vegas can be seen all over the Internet.

The theories and their rationals range from the absurd, such as “a 64-year-old man could not have moved 10 bags up to his room alone” to somewhat sophisticated analysis of cell phone recordings that claim to find evidence of two shooters.

I have not seen any convincing evidence that requires a conspiracy to explain the mass murder.  I use Occam’s razor to winnow out the theories. That is, when given two explanations, the preference should be given to the simpler, less complicated version.

For any incident, an imaginative mind can create an infinite variety of logically consistent explanations. But only one is true. It usually is the least complicated.

For example, I might walk out the door without my cell phone. The simple explanation is that the human mind is complicated and imperfect, and I forgot to put my cell phone in a pocket.

A complicated explanation would be that unknown government agents distracted me with fake bird sounds and a loud car outside of my door, just as I was about to pick up my phone. They knew the timing required by monitoring my movements though the camera in my computer. They needed me to leave the phone to access it so as to substitute a phone with sophisticated tracking devices embedded in it.

There have always been conspiracy theories. The human mind is designed to notice patterns and assign causal relationships. It works for us most of the time. But sometimes the mind creates causality where it does not exist, especially for unusual, complicated, important events that threaten our sense of safety.

The standard explanation is that conspiracy theories serve a psychological need to deny reality.

From reviewjournal.com:

University of Massachusetts professor Kirby Farrell is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and the author of a 2015 book about America’s fascination with rampage killings.

He prefers the term “conspiracy fantasies,” not theories.

Farrell said the need to invent — or to believe — elaborate and often unprovable explanations for attacks like the one in Las Vegas is rooted in fear and avoidance. It is an attempt to “sanitize or wish away the inexplicable violence that overtakes certain individuals,” he said.

“Conspiracy fantasies are a kind of sophisticated game people play to prop up or reinforce denial,” Farrell said.

There is more to it than that.

In the last 20 years, a number of technological advances and the resulting social changes have accelerated the tendency and motivation to create conspiracy theories.

First, we have found that real conspiracies have existed, and have been effective.

Hitler did create fake attacks against Germans to justify the invasion of Poland. The U.S. government used Mafia proxies to attempt the assassination of Fidel Castro. The Russian government used sophisticated devices to assassinate political opponents in the west. The common knowledge of real conspiracies is magnified by the prominence given to the concept in movies and TV shows. Consider “Enemy of the State” or “Conspiracy Theory” or “JFK” or, to go a little further back, “Mission Impossible”.

Second, the public has often been lied to by the government, and some of those lies have been exposed. Lyndon Johnson become famous for lying about the Gulf of Tonkin episode.  Barak Obama lied about “you can keep your plan”.  James Comey lied about any real intention to investigate Hillary. The Federal Government did sanction sales of AK clones to Mexican drug cartels.

Third, “Black” operations are known to exist. By nature, they are not widely publicized. I personally know two people that were involved in “Black Ops”. “Black ops” existence has been widely touted.

Fourth, over the last 20 years, the establishment media has been repeatedly caught in lying, creating false narratives, and cover-ups that are blatantly partisan. The Paula Jones story was spiked by major media before it was outed by Matt Drudge. The misdeeds of Harvey Weinstein were covered up by his media pals for decades. Dan Rather was caught using fake documents in an attempt to throw the 2004 presidential election to the Democrats.

All of the above have eroded trust in government pronouncements and media sources.

Fifth, there are real rewards for someone who can prove a real conspiracy. The people who proved the falsity of the Rathergate documents are still touted on the Internet for the heroes that they are. Codrea and Vanderboegh have been lauded for their work in exposing Fast and Furious.

Sixth, there are real rewards for putting out semi-plausible sounding conspiracy theories.  A site will gather millions of hits and much advertising revenue if it creates a plausible sounding theory that is difficult to disprove.

This all happens at the speed of wi-fi waves and electrons transmitted by wire. The access to massive data from thousands of cell phones and sensors gives citizen investigators enormous resources to pick and chose to create plausible scenarios. The lack of data is more grist for the mill, as conspiracy theorists claim the lack of data is significant. “Why haven’t we seen this video?!” is trumpeted as evidence of a conspiracy when the video may not exist, or there are perfectly valid reasons why it has not been made public.

We will not see an end to conspiracy theories. We must live with them.

Objective truth should win in the end. Internet investigations have shown their worth.  I urge everyone to be careful about spreading unproven theories, and to investigate facts for themselves. Be skeptical, be careful, remember Occam’s razor and other rules of logic. Don’t accept a theory, just because you like it, or because it validates your politics. The truth will out, but it will take time.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch

 

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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Ernesto

The biggest problem for saving gun rights and our interpertation of the 2nd ammendment is allowing a government institution to delve into mental health backgounds and prescription drugs given to those persons. And no one wants that, right?
But thats where this fight is headed. Could it be a compromise?

Rokflyer

@wild Bill. This mornings local news has a commentary on our current opoid problem. Some may think we’re reaching, but I agree with your opinion. A sedated, addicted populace, is much easier influenced and controlled. It would be hard for one to discover and dispute a beaurocratic violation of ones rights. If his priorities we’re dominated by his supply of wonder drugs to function.

george

Here is one for everybody, went to the white house website, they sent me an e-mail inviting me to sign up for e-mail alerts about President Trump, while there I went to the section on the constitution, under the second amendment this is what I saw; The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. Is it me or does this make anyone else feel uneasy. I wrote them and got a response that did not address the wording, just that Mr. Trump would apply the “Law” of the federal and state government’s in order to “protect” the American… Read more »

Kevin Cote

The 2nd Amendment gives no Right. The Right comes from Our Creator .The 2nd Amendment is an order for the government to obeybour Rights…and arm and train and fund thenmilitia…that is every able bodied man .

Rokflyer

@Wild Bill, I wonder if your comment was in vague humor, but I really believe you have a point. This is a subject that has been discussed with earnest dialogue among many conservative friends and myself. Up to and including the actions of some local level Politicos, and their ties to a local Pharma company. By local, I mean in our state. ” Mood Enhancers “, seem to be quite in vogue today as they were 20 years ago. Addiction rates are at an all time high in our country. If a particular Political 2cd amendment adversary, spent the majority… Read more »

Matt Bracken

There is now a big CT ginning up concerning Hooters. Check out all the new YooToob videos on it. Doug Poppa, ex cop and casino security pro in Las Vegas, is trying to head off this fake news conspiracy story. There are enough real mysteries surrounding the LV massacre without discrediting them with bogus conspiracy theories like the non-existent Hooters “second massacre” story. The truth is that ambulances were held back from the concert ground at Tropicana (which is by Hooters Casino) and this location became a casualty collection point. The fact that ambulances were lined up at Tropicana is… Read more »

Ernezto

Never seen or heard of any conspiracy theory of multiple shooters on any liberal news program. Maybe i missed it on Breightbart.

Ernesto

Why would a gun owner and 2nd ammendment proponent shoot hisnown kind; country music lovers?
Makes no sense.
I think he was mentally disturbed. How ya honna deal with crazy people buying guns is the big question.

Matt Bracken

Mark Steyn wrote an outstanding piece called “Theory of the Case.” In the absence of a declared motive or connection to international terrorism, “the method is the message,” in this case, the ready availability of semi-auto rifles presents a grave danger to society. It’s reported that Paddock also set up above another concert, but it turned out to be mostly hip-hoppers. If he had shot up a largely minority concert, the anti-gun message would have been obscured by the “racist killer” story, so he held his fire. A mostly-white country music concert was then perfect for “the method is the… Read more »

Wild Bill

@Ernie, mood (read mind) altering prescription “medications”, a kind of artificial mental disturbance, perhaps? Nearly all of our Senators and House members take election campaign donations from big pharma. I wonder why pharmaceutical industry gives so much money to our legislators?

Rokflyer

@Wild Bill, I wonder if your comment was in vague humor, but I really believe you have a point. This is a subject that has been discussed with earnest dialogue among many conservative friends and myself. Up to and including the actions of some local level Politicos, and their ties to a local Pharma company. By local, I mean in our state. ” Mood Enhancers “, seem to be quite in vogue today as they were 20 years ago. Addiction rates are at an all time high in our country. If a particular Political 2cd amendment adversary, spent the majority… Read more »

Wild Bill

@ROK I try to keep things light, but there is something going on here that Big Pharma is keeping from the public. The motives are clear… profit. The more of us that are addicted, the more profit that they make. There is no profit in us being a free people.

Don

It does seem strange that the killer would bother to drag up so many guns to that room for 10 min worth of shooting. Lots of loaded mags, of course, but one or two rifles would have been sufficient with less chance of being spotted on the way up. Did he have noble visions of dying while surrounded by his precious gun collection? A lot of people would judge how bad-ass or evil he was by the number of guns he had in that room and maybe that was the idea – his or someone else’s .

Tionico

What was it, a total of less than ten minutes of firing? Near six hundred individuals struck by bullets, either dead or wounded. Being generous, even considering the closely spaced crows left little room to miss, that is still a phenomenal rate of fire for a single individual. Add in the range (at and beyond the limit of accuracy of his chosen implements) the known greatly reduced accuracy of the “bump fire” stocks he alledgedly used, on the face of it we’d be loooking at a VERY seasoned rifleman of some large experience. The released details about this perp suggest… Read more »

BJI

Has anybody seen actual numbers of those wounded or killed by the gunfire and how many were trampled in the panic?

James Higginbotham

all those other people mostly were injured running away and falling down ext in their panic.some were injured by ricochets and other means.

Wild Bill

I see that President Trump released 30,000 pages of JFK assassination documents. What other president did that?!

James Higginbotham

Bill.
i bet when those files are brought out they will be so REDACTED IT WILL BE HARD TO READ WHAT’S IN THEM.

tomcat

The way they are conducting the Vegas investigation leads a person to question what the real truth is. There are too many dangling accounts of what people saw and heard and differences in time lines and accounts between the LEOs and MGM. All that leaves us with questions and breeds conspiracy theories. Will the truth ever come out?

Wild Bill

I see that President Trump is releasing 30,000 previously unreleased documents from the JFK assignation. The touch stone of Trump policy is that We the People are really the boss.

Kevin Cote'

Every situation that is presented must be filtered through 2 questions. Number 1 , why would this event happen ?.. many sub questions under this the least of which should be considered a ” conspirisy . Number 2. Who does this event benefit ?… Let me help you with that..the alleged ” perpetrator” was a 64 year old white male whobalsoballegwdly had guns…of unknown origin…
When a ” conspiracy” is proven correct , it ceases to be a conspirisy… Prove something ,anything..and do not rely on the government controlled media…They will always benefit.

Rokflyer

While I totally agree with your summation of conspiracy themed events. It still requires one to consider the options, if a sensible conclusion is to be found. While I insist the individual was completely capable of planning, performing, and committing the Vegas tragedy, there is much more to this story. It has nothing to do with a conspiracy. It has everything to do with the fact that life was taken, and the individuals reason remains open to speculation. The consequences of being obtuse to facts far outweigh the burden of jumping to conclusions.

Jay Dee

This is not a normal murder investigation. Law enforcement forgets that this was a public event that occurred in front of hundreds of witnesses. More transparency in the investigation would go a long way to quelling the rumors and conspiracy theories The recent death of a prominent witness, Kymberley Suchomel, who claimed there were multiple shooters should be handled openly; there should be no question about her cause of death. I’d like to know how many fired cartridge cases were recovered. Deleting the movies and pictures from witness phones didn’t help; it looks like they’re hiding something.