“Them”

Who is really running things?

What are they keeping from us?

What do they want?

Questions such as these, crucial to every conspiracy theory, all imply the secret existence of a “them,” lurking in the shadows, pulling strings behind the scenes .

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“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t
mean they aren’t after you.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t
mean they aren’t after you.”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t
mean they aren’t after you.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Catch-22

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a “conspiracy” as: “A combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose; an agreement between two or more persons to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible (especially in relation to treason, sedition, or murder); a plot.”¹¹

T ¹¹ 1 1

Implicit in this definition is the notion of a plurality of people.

We often use the term “them” or “they” in casual speech, as if knowledge of whomever we are referring to is a given—eg, “Well, they just want to keep us lazy and stupid, so we’ll sit at home and consume while they slowly take over the world.” Given that hidden hierarchies have governed mankind since the first agrarian civilizations, there is no reason to think that the average person voicing suspicions about an ill-defined hidden hierarchy operating clandestinely—a “them”—is a novel phenomenon.

Marketing companies have even picked up on this predilection, bombarding us with slogans such as “the weight loss secret they don’t want you to know about,” implying there is a group who are concealing information from the general public because it would hurt their bottom line.

they they they

Thus, the existence of a “them” is, by necessity, indispensable to any conspiracy theory.

And, throughout the ages, there have been no shortage of “thems” to whom secret actions and sinister motives have been ascribed.

In the Western world, perhaps the oldest “them” has been Jews, or, “the Jews” (in “them”-speak).

The tragic irony is that this belief has repeatedly led to systematic persecution and murderous pogroms perpetrated against the Jewish people—a cycle one would think an allegedly powerful tribe could and would have prevented.