The bizarre charm of conspiracy theories

There is a certain pleasure in studying conspiracy theories. Much of the pleasure stems from the thought that in some people it is the imagination which works overtime, allowing them to indulge in fantasies we can only marvel at. Verily did Shakespeare aver centuries ago, 'Imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown.' Ah, the imagination! Where would we be without it? Where would be our poetry, our intense fascination for literature? Imagination ignites the sensuality which we often link with our feelings of romance, with the persons we desire.

And imagination is once again the vehicle which leads the world to damnation. The imagination in Adolf Hitler was wild enough to make him draw the conclusion that all the ailments of his country, indeed of the world, had to do with the methods employed by the Jewish community in their everyday existence. And in that Hitlerite imagination lay the seeds of a conspiracy theory. But recall the devastation such imagination caused all across the globe. Six million Jews perished because the Fuhrer seriously considered a conspiracy theory in a way that upended every rule of morality in the world.

Now, not very long ago, it became public knowledge that former United States (US) President Joe Biden has not been in the very best of health. People upset at the news rallied around him, wishing him all the best. But now, as we have been informed, the old disturbing story of Joe Biden having died years ago has been taken up by President Donald Trump. In his Truth Social portal, the current holder of the White House has advanced the bizarre theory that Biden died in 2020 and that the man who served as President of the United States in 2021-2025 was actually a Biden clone. Now you might gasp, place your palm across your open mouth not because you accept Trump's prognosis of Biden's state of being but because you simply cannot imagine that it is a US President speaking so disparagingly of his predecessor.

So Biden, in the fervid imagination of such conspiracy theorists, died in 2020, the year in which he prevented Trump from coming by a second consecutive term in the White House. These conspirators have quite been unable to let us know if in November 2020 it was a Biden clone who was elected President or it was the real Biden who beat Trump at the vote but died soon afterward. Interesting, but did Vice President Kamala Harris know what had been happening? Or will these conspiracy theorists now come up with a Harris clone or tell people that Kamala Harris did not really know she had been the running mate of a clone politician?

Conspiracy theories have for decades focused on the 1969 moon landing by the astronauts of Apollo-11. For the purveyors of such theories, man never went to the moon but went through a simulated version of the lunar surface and yet propagated the lie that the moon had been conquered. Articles and even books have been published to persuade people into believing that no moon landing took place, that it was all a sham designed by policymakers in Washington. Add to that another bizarre conspiracy: a section of Muslims has for years disseminated the notion that Neil Armstrong was so moved by a spasm of religiosity as he stepped on the moon's surface that he became a follower of the Islamic faith. Armstrong did nothing of the kind, but conspiracy theorists have the delusion in them that prevents them from acknowledging their errors.

In our part of the world, meaning South Asia, conspiracy theories have often provided a strange kind of entertainment for people. This writer was educated by an elderly relative in his village long years ago that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had not been assassinated in August 1975 but had been spirited away to safety by the Indian government and that in good time he would reappear in Bangladesh! It was mind-boggling, especially because the story was coming from an individual who had been educated and had led a normal enough life with his spouse and children.

That takes us to the stories disseminated by conspiracy theorists over the years about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Conspiracy theorists have thrown up a couple of arguments about the end of the prominent Indian nationalist. One relates to the idea that Netaji did not die but was abducted by agents of the Soviet Union and kept in a Stalinist prison, where he breathed his last. Another theory, based on the fact that a monk uncannily resembling Netaji was spotted beside the remains of Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964, was that the monk was certainly Netaji in his new avatar and that he swiftly made his way out of the hall. All efforts to trace this Netaji yielded no result.

In January 1966, when Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri succumbed to a cardiac arrest within hours of reaching a peace deal with Pakistan's President Ayub Khan in Tashkent, it was given out by conspiracy theorists --- the idea yet holds for a good number of people in India --- that the Indian leader's sudden death had been caused by an injection of poison in his food. The theory, if at all it was a credible theory, has never been proved. Likewise, following the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963, the abominable idea was spread that President Lyndon Johnson, who had succeeded Kennedy, had had a hand in the making of the tragedy.

It was obscene, this idea of LBJ conspiring to kill his President. Nothing of course came of this theory. In this present day and age, nothing will come of the disturbing ideas being bandied around by JFK's nephew and Trump's Secretary for Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, on the 'ill-effects' of certain medicines provided to people, particularly children, in the United States. RFK Jr's ideas have repeatedly been dismissed as outlandish, part of the conspiracy he spots around him. The larger Kennedy clan has dismissed his theory, which is just as well.

One last point. Back in 1971, when the Bengali nation was engaged in an existential struggle for survival in the face of the brutality of the occupation Pakistan army, many were the people in erstwhile West Pakistan who could not contain their anger against the incarcerated Bangabandhu. They went epileptic with their condemnation of the Bengali leader, at one point throwing up the laughable idea that he and his family were actually followers of the Hindu faith masquerading as Muslims!

Not many years later did we as well as Pakistanis stumble on the discovery that while Bangabandhu's faith was without blemish, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's background which raised questions. His mother had been a Hindu and accepted Islam when she married Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, the father of Pakistan's future leader.

ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com