Conspiracy Theory | Eugénie Mérieau | TEDxUniGoettingen

imagine if I told you that since the very first day you were born you were tricked into believing that someone was watching you around the clock 24 hours a day seven days a week all year long imagine if I told you that since the very first day the books you enjoy the TV you watch and the people you trust the most even your own parents are covering up for a big lie in order to control you and many others like you you would certainly call me a conspiracy theorist and you would be right but wait

a second then you would also have to call most of the people in this room conspiracy theorists as well for most of us we had our first experience as conspiracy theorists when we started to question the official account of one of the biggest conspiracies ever known to mankind Santa Claus to solve a few to whom this story apply try to remember you were 6 years old maybe 7 who was ridiculous back then the ones who denied the existence of Santa are the ones who still believed that one single individual could visit every house on the

planet in a single night in Western culture ceasing to believe in Santa is one of the first indicator that a child has reached the age of rational thinking to doubt what people tell you even those you trust even those in a position of authority your parents is the very marker of critical thinking so why is it that now the ones who challenge the official truth are the unreasonable ones why is it that now the ones who believe at face value what they are being told are the rational ones if you doubt then you're labeled a

conspiracy theorist and you must either be cured as if you have a mental disease or you must be excluded because you're too dangerous most of the time booth last week an amazing singer appeared on the show The Voice in France she chose the song hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and she sang it so perfectly well that within a couple of seconds all the four members of the jury just pressed the red button to turn their seats around and gaze upon the face of such an angelic voice and she does really look like an angel she's very

young she's 22 years old French media praised her beauty and talents many agreed that she had to be the winner of this year's competition until the next day one of her old tweets was exhumed from the graveyard of Twitter it referred to the terrorist attacks that took place in France in the South of France in 2016 and she wrote quote I find it weird that terrorists always leave their ID cards behind them for the police to find unquote the French media was outraged this is not acceptable she's not an angel she's a conspiracy theorist she

should be excluded from the show now well she wasn't excluded because she quit she apologized for her tweet and quit for good now in her case apologizing was probably the best option my own experience with being labeled a conspiracy theorist is a little different first of all as you may have noticed unfortunately not twenty-two years old anymore but fortunately I've been able to leave all those additional years without ever ever ever having my own Twitter account I am a political scientist I study military cooze I focus on constitutions those Constitution that entrench the power of

the military for good so I try to look for words that would capture this power that remains even when officially a civilian government has taken back over after a coup and I thought the words deep state were pretty good it was not one of my brightest moves because actually the word deep states are associated with conspiracy theories why well maybe because it reminds us of one of the most famous conspiracy theories ever a conspiracy theories that turned out to be true the Watergate as you may know the main informant was nicknamed deep throat now those

two words together have since had quite a successful career over the internet but it was also used to name the main character in the series x-files the plot was simple it's about aliens the American government has found out that there are aliens on earth and he's trying to cover it up so that's why when I say deep and state or deep politics or deep government it's may bring back scary images of aliens and David Duchovny as well so you look all worried now so I'm wondering if I haven't ruined your belief in Santa okay there's

a day I always remember I was invited to speak at a conference in a very fancy room just like this one or this one hi Celine marble statues and wooden floor I was sitting next to an academic a reknowned senior academic whom I dearly admired he had earlier praised my work and even published it but for some reason on that day as I was speaking he interrupted me and said is the CIA involved as well well I bet it is because the CIA is always responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world isn't it

miss Millie oh now the room immediately went quiet in German we call that a touch slug argument a killer argument because it just killed the discussion it's not about what I'm saying it's about me as a person it's about denying me the right to be here in this room excluding me from the community of scientists it's very brutal symbolic violence now what he didn't like was the idea that sometimes deep structures actually matter more than the visible workings of the daily government in fact in the social sciences structural lists are usually mistaken for conspiracy theorists

because they reason on the principle that structural reasons explain way things unfold the way they do the opposite view is the cock-up theory whereby everything is random and happens by accident the result is cows well first of all let me tell you something it's very very difficult to organize a military coup by accident and second it's not because there is cows that there was not a lengthy process of planning involved just think of the typical family reunion weeks and weeks of planning and then cows so let's get back to my original metaphor you might object

well center this is not a real conspiracy because it's harmless a real conspiracy has an unlawful means and unlawful ends as well well that's right the center close example does not fit actually it's what we call a quasi conspiracy which is something quite different it's when people cooperate without even noticing it just because their interests coincide it's like an invisible hand no planning involved let me give you an example there is currently this worldwide and planned conspiracy that tend to spread the idea that menstrual blood is in fact blue less trivially the mechanism of quasi

conspiracies has enabled governments with the help of businesses scientists and intellectuals to advance throughout history the dominance of one specific gender one specific race without those involved knowing what they were being a part of now in politics people conspire all the time and they very much know why just think of the Roman Empire and the assassination of Julius Caesar by his closest aides you would call that a Machiavellian tactics and that would be anachronistic but that's ok Machiavelli led the foundations for the way we think about politics today his book was published in the 16th

century and he mentions the word conspired 20 times out of 40 pages he basically told us that the art of politics is the art of conspiracy and counter conspiracy now there is something he forgot to mention is that the art of politics is also the art of inventing false conspiracies in order to justify an illegal or immoral action this is the only way you can legitimize a military coup or a war of aggression the founding father of the technique of the coup Napoleon did just that if you texted there was a conspiracy that was about

to overthrow the government and that's how he seized power and he was able to rule for 15 years in France and much of Europe a century later Hitler sorry Adolf Hitler made an extended power grab after blaming the fire at the parliaments on the communists as part of a communist conspiracy and closer to us think about the war in Iraq and how the Bush administration lied at the UN about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the threat it posed to international peace not to mention the fact that still today many people believe that

Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 and that this is the justification for the war now the French philosopher Michel Foucault said there are three ways to control speech first you repress it second you label its advocates as irrational crazy people untrustworthy third you label the content as unscientific today do we label the government's who engage in conspiracies as conspiracy theorists no we do not because this label special function is to attach a stigma to a specific discourse the popular discourse not the official discourse today conspiracy theories aren't scientific and conspiracy theories are irrational

so will tomorrow conspiracy theories be criminalized who controls speech controls truth so if we're serious about freedom of expression if we cherish the plurality of truth we should resist as much as we can the creation of the Ministry of Truth we are here because we are narration why or the millennial generation so we were born in the late 1980s but there's something sure we don't want to live in 1984 thank you very much [Applause]