[Ben Carver]

That history should copy literature is inconceivable

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero”

 

The mass shooting in Las Vegas of 1 October has been swiftly interpreted as a carefully orchestrated false-flag attack, with the now-familiar identification of “crisis actors” by online commentators—the curtain pullers of online conspiracy culture. On messaging platforms, theories are swapped and revised as to why the attack could not have happened as described by the “official narratives” of mainstream media. The sceptics in this case have pointed to the absence of appropriate quantities of blood, the apparent slips and inconsistencies of the “crisis actors” who (so the theory goes) can be spotted over and again in news coverage of terrorist attacks, and the impossibility of people being struck by bullets in the way that they were. These objections, especially the first and third, recall the features of the conspiracy theories that refuse to accept the official account of the assassination of John F. Kennedy over 50 years ago, theories that have just been given a fresh infusion of classified files. The algorithms of news distribution on social media may be the mechanisms of contemporary conspiracy culture (links follow links down the rabbit hole), but the coordination of space, time, and action to articulate history as plot can be traced much further back than JFK, to the art of stagecraft; which is a terribly apt comparison when the latest atrocity has taken place in the world city that more than any other resembles a theatre or movie set.

This is the first paragraph of an article, the rest of which is available here: https://conspiratorialthinking.blog/2017/11/26/ballistics-conspiracy-theatre/

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