More important, conspiracy is a way to maintain control. In a world where even the most authoritarian regimes struggle to impose censorship, one has to surround audiences with so much cynicism about anyone’s motives, persuade them that behind every seemingly benign motivation is a nefarious, if impossible-to-prove plot, so that they lose faith in the possibility of an alternative, a tactic the renowned Russian media analyst Vasily Gatov calls “white jamming.” And the net effect of all these endless pileups of conspiracies is that you, the little guy, can never change anything. For if you are
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