Skeptic Project

http://anticultist.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-psychological-profile-of-a-conspiracy-theorist/</p>

A high percentage of the zeitgeist movements followers are conspiracy theorists drawn towards the movement through Peter’s deceptive movies. His first two films attribute many facets of societies problems into externalised grand claims, such as the worlds problems are caused by a rigged financial system controlled by the federal bankers whose aim is to ruin the lives of people. This is apparently achieved by manipulation of companies, stocks, inflation/deflation, market biasing and other such matters beyond the scope of my willingness to research.

Likewise the claims that 911 was an inside job by both sides of the fence, the Muslims blaming Israel and usa to incite anti-Muslim emotions, the western world believing it was the corporatocracy trying to manipulate world events to gain monetary control and resource control for their own greed and selfish reasons. Then we move into the religious aspect where all the worlds’ problems are blamed on the world’s religions, and an attempt to disprove their factuality is carried out through manipulative use of vague unconnected 'facts'.

In short these are your typical conspiracy theorists wet dreams, they are an externalisation of a great enemy so large as to affect everyone’s lives and setting them as almost untouchable to the everyday man, providing a level of ambiguity of who is exactly to blame, a level of impotency of action against 'them', all personal failings are attributed to an externalized problem so responsibility through personal decision making and choices is avoided, and finally a level of action becomes futile even if planned and attempted.

This can be seen in the zeitgeist movement where they blame the monetary system for the worlds problems, the world religions for problems, any charitable action is deemed ineffective and useless, and the solution is neatly provided for the member all nicely packaged. None of the problems are the individuals, rather it is others who are the problem and it is larger entities that are to blame for the individual’s situation.

Solutions in conspiracy theories usually come in the form of being handed the answers of who is to blame prior to the solutions.

For example in the zeitgeist movement after knowing who to blame the solutions are to boycott religious institutes, boycott banking institutes, boycott corporate ties, relinquish the monetary system completely, and then turn everything over to a new system devoid of any responsibility for the participants. All the solutions for lifes problems are solved and everyone is happy because they automatically get what they need and want for free and with little effort.

This us and them mentality is prevalent in conspiracy theorists mind-sets, ordinarily the conspiracy theorist is more prone to distrust and have a disenfranchised mind-set towards general society.

There are a few classifications of conspiracy theories:
Obstructive conspiracies:
A conspiracy whose purpose is to prevent, or at least impede, some event from occurring.

Oppressive conspiracies:
Purport to explain perceived social inequalities or perceived political disenfranchisement.

Deceptive conspiracies:
Dedicated to presenting the illusion that the root cause of some social, economic, or political problem is something other than actual cause.

All three of the above are present in Peter Joseph’s movies; this is not unique to only his movies and a brief watch of many other conspiracists like Alex Jones and David Icke whose conspiracies are more extreme and obvious. A conspiracy theory need not always be obvious, often they take the form of a mistrustful statement against an individual that may or may not be based in fact, but attribute a level of power of the 'master' over the 'slaves'. For example a mistrust of the government official, or the local police force or something along those lines. This simple matter can then escalate into fully blown conspiracies as the rumour increases in popularity and numbers discussing it.
In recent years conspiracy theories have become popularised in mainstream television programmes and in news events, quite often when something large happens it is instantly blamed on something large, For instance the recent Haiti earthquakes were blamed on an unknown technology the governments were using HAARP, the recent airplane crash of the Polish parliament was blamed on Electro Magnetic Pulse weapons, the recent volcano in Iceland is some mysterious government experiment, Lady Diana's car crash was not just a simple accident. This has created an increase in populations having mistrust and irrational beliefs.

The larger the impact of the event the more bizarre and extreme the conspiracy theories become, it is a uniqueness of the conspiracy theorists mindset to avoid accepting the mundane answer and take on a preference for the unlikeliest of answers.

This all feeds rather neatly into the zeitgeist movement because having the ability to blame a huge system like the monetary society we live in and a few elitist fat controllers, allows the movement to avoid their own failings to incorporate into this society as well as allows them to rationalise an untested solution that is of itself a pre made solution handed to them.

[Goertzel, Ted (1994): Belief in Conspiracy Theories, Political Psychology 15: 733-744] States that belief in conspiracy theories is correlated with

•anomia, the respondent stated a belief that he/she felt alienated or disaffection relative to “the system;”
•a tendency to distrust other people; and
•a feeling of insecurity regarding continued employment.

These above characteristics again fit neatly into the zeitgeist movements membership and administration, and it can be seen clearly that the attraction to their movement is actually hinged upon the concepts above being the factors to blame for societies problems. Another interesting point to note is that these conditions are claimed to not be solely fixed in any particular gender, age, sex preference or nationality, which adds to the reason of the potential popularity of the movement. Though it is claimed that all minorities [race/sexual preference etc..] are more prone to the anomia characteristics because of inherent experience with oppression and phobias leading to mistrust, lack of social standing from lack of employment security.

So you want explanations why the movement is as it is, the above gives a rational explanation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/6354139.stm<br /> http://www.world-mysteries.com/newgw/gw_rmd1.htm<br /> http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/conspire.doc