Why are so many attracted to Whacky Conspiracy Theories?

This is a modification of the Flammarion engraving by an unknown artist. It is referred to as the Flammarion engraving because its first documented appearance is in page 163 of Camille Flammarion’s L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (Paris, 1888), a work on meteorology for a general audience. The engraving depicts a man peering through the Earth’s atmosphere as if it were a curtain to look at the inner workings of the universe. The original caption below the picture translated to: “A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet…”.

Last Saturday, UK based journalist George Monbiot published a fascinating interview with a conspiracy theorist.

It is titled — “You’re going to call me a Holocaust denier now, are you?’: George Monbiot comes face to face with his local conspiracy theorist”. It was published on Star Wars day, May 4.

He opens by making a rather interesting point. There are real conspiracies and he lists a few examples …

In the Cambridge Analytica scandal: a secretive micro-targeting campaign likely to have influenced the Brexit vote. In the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers, showing how the ultra-rich hide their money from taxes and legal scrutiny.

… hence he leans into the phrase “conspiracy fantasists” for those that peddle weird whacky stuff that has no evidence. He also adds in the observation that those who embrace such fantasies tend to have no interest at all in any of the real documented conspiracies.

He wondered why some do embrace such fantasies, so he went to interview conspiracy theorist and artist Jason Liosatos who lives near him in Totnes Devon in the UK.

What he discovered was a truly fasinating character. Mr Liosatos is both a “very nice bloke”, which is what Mr Monbiot himself found, and also what all those around Mr…