This here thingie had been sitting inert in my browser’s tabs for months, reloading, closing, waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for now.
CONSPIRACY THEORY IN AMERICA
This excellent article (don’t let the title fool you—it’s not just about America) came back to mind while I was talking to some people in Samothraki just as the coup in Turkey was hitting social media and the Web. By the way, being in the army sitting on a frontier island when a neighboring country does such a thing is not a fun place to be at all.
While discussing with those guys, I mentioned that some people had been tweeting that the coup might have been an inside job orchestrated by Erdogan to eradicate his opposition. My conversation partners dismissed the possibility out of hand as a “conspiracy theory” and that was that. No more had to be said or discussed. The mere utterance of this magic couple of words is enough to settle any argument that challenges the motives and means of powerful people.
Colour me skeptical. Waaay skeptical.
See also my review of Conspiracy Theories: The Pocket Essential Guide.
While I was writing the above sentence, I couldn’t help but smirk at myself and the accidental Liakopoulos vibe it does exude.
