This politically-debilitating belief-tendency is almost universal in the Gulf and Levant. Revisionism starts early there.
Most people (if you look at whole populations) think that forces are at work which are hidden from them. The question, most of the time, is only how incredible the conclusions are. The Princess of Wales was murdered. 9/11 was not conducted by Al Qaeda. Mubarak was not an ally of the US. The US is behind the disturbances in Syria. Osama bin Laden isn’t dead.
Egyptians are rather more realistic.
June 7 2011 at 11:57 pm
Much of the credulity (masquerading as seeing the truth), obviously, has led to the support of governments in power.
March 24 2013 at 11:30 pm
I heard another recently. 9/11, which was obviously the work of the Pentagon, was the testing of a secret new weapon which could pulverise matter. Why could one identify nothing in the rubble? Not even a bath or lavatory.
March 25 2013 at 11:42 pm
On the other hand, we half-believed it when we were told (by Berezovsky, Litvinenko and others) that Putin organised the bombings of apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 in order to justify Russia’s second military intervention in Chechnya.