Monday, February 18, 2008

Di, Dodi, and a Conspiracy So Vast


Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of Harrod's and father of the deceased Dodi, told a coroner's inquest Feb. 18 that his son and Princess Diana were murdered by British and French secret agents acting at the behest of the Royal Family, particularly Prince Philip. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that rekindles interest in a decade-old death and generates buzz in both print and online. The sad thing is that there are far too many people on the planet that appreciate the paranoid mindset. There's all kinds of proof the royals were creepy people and that Diana was not loved, but murder by MI-6? More like death by paparazzi!
As one blog commenter told the Guardian, sure you can show that Prince Philip was educated in Baden by people close to the Nazis, but that "doesn't prove a goddamn thing."
The way in which conspiracy theories kill critical thinking has been addressed quite well by people like Chip Berlet. But there are still great minds of my generation that have been destroyed by the search for the ultimate conspiracy -- take Global Outlook magazine, for example. There are indeed power structures that run the world, but searching for vast conspiracies is the business of small minds, not open ones.

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