Comment by Animats
7 days ago
There are more conspiracies. Here are some well-verified ones:
- Epstein and way too many important people.
- The big one from the 1970s onward to increase the return on capital by lowering living standards, the "Powell memorandum".[1] That's the founding document of the modern conservative movement.
- Facebook/Meta being behind schemes for age verification.[2]
[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/
[2] https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...
I wouldn't say that Epstein is a vindication of conspiracy theories, at least not the "Bigfoot" type. Epstein was already in trouble with the law for trafficking over 20 years ago. The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that. It's shameful that these stories didn't get more attention sooner, but the general veracity of them wasn't in question.
The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.
> The pedophilia in the Catholic church was known decades before that.
Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population. There are more paedophiles in schools and social services than in religious organisations - and there have even been more convictions of teachers and social workers, at least tin the UK. The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere. A surprising number of people the UK do not know about the biggest big paedophile scandal in the country, the Islington one, that was huge, and at least one politician who was responsible for the failure to investigate went on to have a successful career in politics (the only time it set back her career at all was when Blair wanted to make her minister for children there was a backlash)
> The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere.
I think what earned the Catholic Church their reputation was that the church was actively involved in protecting known pedophiles and repeatedly shuffling them around effectively giving them an endless supply of fresh victims while suppressing the voices of many of the children brave enough to come forward. The problem with the church isn't that pedos exist there, but that they've been very often supported and defended and their actions covered up in ways that don't (and often couldn't) happen in schools.
> Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population.
I doubt you have any reliable statistics about this, given how many victims keep silent out of fear.
But in any case, the moral failure of the church was not the existence of individual abusers (which indeed can exist anywhere in society), but how on an institutional level known abusers were protected by the curch. Everyone who was part of the cover-up (which went all the way to the top) is complicit.
I think if 20 years ago you claimed that there was a global sex trafficking ring that procured young girls for elites, politicians, celebrities, and royalty, you'd be laughed off as a David Icke level conspiracist. These days it just seems obvious that that was going on.
Its not just a sex trafficking ring, its a corruption ring, and the corruption part of it is much bigger. It is what the arrests in the UK have been for. Given how senior some of the people in the UK are (Mandelson is a former cabinet minister, and a former European Commissioner, and was very influential even before he held those posts).
If they had not trafficked minors as well I wonder whether it would ever have been exposed. It makes me wonder what else is going on.
Hard disagree!
Such things have existed for millennia. What's more surprising is that people claim to be surprised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesan
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"Bigfoot" isn't inherently a conspiracy theory. If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. To be a conspiracy theorist, you also have to posit a grand conspiracy to conceal the existence of bigfoot.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
> If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong
That not a philosophically supportable statement. "There's insufficient evidence to warrant belief in your claim" is more realistic.
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> If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
No, but we did call people conspiracy theorists for believing the thing Snowden subsequently showed to be real.
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> If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist.
I’m not sure if “I’m just a cryptozoologist” is much of a vindication.
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