Part - 5 > ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Was Devised by the CIA The term “conspiracy theory” is now used to dismiss narratives that go against the grain. According to Attkisson, this is intentional, as the term itself was devised by the CIA as a response to theories about the assassination of JFK.
“It was shown in documents that there was a suggestion that agents go out and talk to reporters about these things as conspiracy theories — and again, common sense should tell you, as it does me, I’m married to a former law enforcement official who has said to me many times, you know the conspiracy theory phrase in its use doesn’t make sense. Nearly everything is a conspiracy.”11
Anything that involves two or more people is technically a conspiracy, but now when people hear the term, they’re conditioned to think it’s false. “That’s designed to pluck this little part of your brain that says, ‘well that thing’s not true.’” When Attkisson hears the term, however, she thinks that information may well be true. “If somebody’s trying to debunk it, it usually means a powerful interest is behind it and it makes me want to go search for more information on that thing.”
The term “conspiracy theory” has lost meaning now because it’s used so much. “Debunked”, “quackery” and “antivaccine” are all terms that are similarly being used as propaganda tools. “There’s a whole cast of propaganda phrases that I’ve outlined that are cues. When you hear them, they should make you think, ‘I need to find out more about it,’” Attkisson says.
Part -6 > Fact Checkers Pounce on Accurate BMJ Investigation In another example of the lengths that fact-checkers will go to discredit a story — even if it’s true — take an article published in the BMJ, titled, “COVID-19: Researchers blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”12 Written by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, it details a series of problems with laboratory management and quality control checks by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
According to a regional director formerly employed by Ventavia, she witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns, repeatedly, she made a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and was fired the same day.13
Soon after Thacker’s investigative piece was published in BMJ, it was “fact checked” by a group called Lead Stories, which referred to the investigation as a “hoax alert” in the related URL. Along with “correcting” statements that Thacker did not make, Lead Stories disparaged the investigation for “missing context,” but as investigative reporter Matt Taibbi explained, “‘Missing context’ has become a term to disparage reporting that is true but inconvenient.”14
Lead Stories took further issue with the BMJ investigation because it was shared by people such as Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy, who themselves have been targeted by fake fact checkers. Taibbi added:15
“The real issue with Thacker’s piece is that it went viral and was retweeted by the wrong people. As Lead Stories noted with marked disapproval, some of those sharers included the likes of Dr. Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy. To them, this clearly showed that the article was bad somehow, but the problem was, there was nothing to say the story was untrue.”
Thacker also called the “fact check” against his BMJ investigation “insane,” telling Taibbi:16
“Here’s what they do. They’re not fact checking facts. What they’re doing is checking narratives. They can’t say that your facts are wrong, so it’s like, ‘Aha, there’s no context.’ Or, ‘It’s misleading.’ But that’s not a fact check. You just don’t like the story.”
Part - 7 > Reality Is Being Altered in Real Time As it stands, information is being changed in real time to meet the common agenda. This includes definitions in dictionaries and on official government websites. Examples of definitions that have been changed recently include those for pandemic, herd immunity, vaccines and anti-vaxxer. Attkisson reiterates:17
“Virtually every form of information and sourcing that can be co-opted has been. That includes the dictionary definitions; that includes everything because these are important ways to influence thought. Language is very powerful. People don’t want to be affiliated with certain names and labels.
It reminds me of ‘1984,’ the George Orwell story about the futuristic society, under which history was being rewritten in real time to jive with the version that the government wanted or the party wanted it to be. Definitions now are being rewritten and changed in real time to fit with the vision that the establishment wants people to think.”
For now, you can still use the Internet Archive, commonly known as Archive.org and IA, as a historical archive. In addition to digitally hosting more than 1.4 million books and other documents, Archive.org acts as a historical vault for the Internet, preserving cached versions of websites that are no longer accessible to the public.18
Archive.org’s Wayback machine preserves digital information that has been removed or deleted, whether intentionally or for other reasons, but it, too, could one day disappear. Attkisson says:19
“It’s been a fascinating way to prove the effort to change our perception of how things are and the reality and what we thought we remembered from the other day, because all we really have now is the electronic record, by and large, and if that can be manipulated, there could be a time when — if they get rid of the Wayback machine, for example — that we can’t ever prove that anything was any different.”
Attkisson is maintaining a running list of things the media or public policy got wrong during the pandemic, which can still be verified using the Wayback machine, but which were not acknowledged for being wrong or corrected by the press. They include:20
Claims that the lab theory about the release of coronavirus had been debunked, when it had not been debunked Public health officials saying masks don’t work, and then saying masks do work Fauci testifying to congress that the death rate for coronavirus was 10 times worse than the flu, yet Attkisson found a published article by Fauci where he said the opposite, that “the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza”21 It was wrong to send infected people from hospitals to nursing homes It was wrong to isolate at home and close down parks and beaches; early data from New York City showed the vast majority of people hospitalized with coronavirus had been isolated at home, while people outside were not getting sick It was wrong to tell people to wash their groceries off to prevent COVID-19 It was wrong to say COVID-19 shots prevented infection and transmission, and that the shots prevented 100% of hospitalizations and deaths It was wrong to not focus more on therapeutics prior to shots and also post-shots
Part - 8 > You Can Be Controlled if You Live Inside the Box Attkisson references a whole generation of people who live inside the box, meaning the internet. Those who rely solely on the internet for their information are at serious risk of being controlled. She explains:22
“They didn’t know a time when information was to be gathered elsewhere by looking around and seeing what you hear, and seeing what you saw, and talking to people around you and looking at books and research and so on.
And the people that want to control the information understand that if they can only control really a few basic sources — we’re talking about Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia — they’ve got a lock on information, because we’ve all been funneled to those few sources, and that’s been the goal.
So if you think of it that way, there’s a whole lot of people that get pretty much everything they know through the internet. And the goal of the people trying to make the narrative is to make people live online and to think that’s reality.”
The danger of this is that the internet paints a picture that’s different from reality. You may read something that doesn’t sound quite right, or that you don’t agree with, but the internet makes you feel like you’re in the minority — even if you’re really not.
“Understand that you may actually be in the majority,” Attkisson says, “… but the goal of what they do online is to make you think you’re an outlier when you’re not, to make you afraid to talk about your viewpoint or what you think, because you may actually be the majority opinion but they want to control that and make you think you’re the one who’s crazy.” The solution? Live outside the box:23
“You can be made to believe that — if you live in the box. So, I’m constantly telling people live outside the box. Yes, you can get information there and do what you do online, but certainly trust your cognitive dissonance, talk to the people around you. If you travel, talk to the people in the places you go. You’ll get a whole different picture, as I do, of what’s really happening out here than if you look online.”
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