RadicalStu Blog

Conspiracy Theories

It’s all too easy to get caught up in a conspiracy theory.  You only have to look at the number of, otherwise sensible, Celtic supporters who will jump on any evidence of a wrong refereeing decision as incontrovertible proof of a conspiracy.  It is also easy to concoct a conspiracy simply be selecting the appropriate evidence and ignoring contrary evidence.

The recent video, showing a couple of Celtic players on-stage singing an Irish political song while members of the audience chanted their support for the IRA, has brought conspiracies in droves.  Celtic minded conspiracy theorists have jumped on a fake “second video” to conclude that the original video is a fake.  I’m sure that they would not have needed the fake video to come to that conclusion.  Rangers conspiracy theorists have pointed to the discrepancy between the way that the press jumped all over Donald Findlay’s singing of an Irish political song and their seeming reluctance to cover this story; sitting on the story for several days after they were aware of it.

There was a time when it was difficult to conjure up a good conspiracy.  You mostly had to rely on you and your mates to come up with evidence and it was difficult to disseminate your theory beyond this group.  They still popped up, growing up in instances like Willie Woodburn’s sine die ban, where a sense of injustice was universal amongst a group.  In recent years the conspiracy business has really taken off.  The internet has made it easy to get all of the “evidence” you need to “prove” any theory and has also made it trivial to disseminate the theory. 

This has led to two main conspiracy theories on the fan sites for the old firm and these in turn have become an article of faith for many fans.  For Celtic fans, this is that there is a refereeing/SFA conspiracy that favours Rangers.  For Rangers fans, it is the media favouring Celtic (although Celtic fans also like this one in the opposite direction).

Both of these are nonsense, of course, but it is easy to see the evidence that supports your beliefs and simply not notice the evidence that does not support your beliefs. 

The argument made about referees is that since Rangers have more fans (active or otherwise) than any other team in Scotland, it stands to reason that more referees will support them than any other team in Scotland.  There are two problems with this theory.  The first is that, in my experience, the majority of non-old firm fans have a deep dislike for Rangers so there will still be more football fans that dislike Rangers than like them.  The second problem is the assumption that referees go onto the pitch supporting one side or another.  I think this is pretty laughable, both from a logical point of view and based on the evidence.  So-called Rangers supporting referees are just as likely to give bad decisions against Rangers as for them.

As for the media. The simple fact is that almost without exception, the Scottish sporting press are a bunch of lazy, amateur hacks who will take the easy story when ever possible.  The editorial policy is to come up with something that will sell.  This normally means something that will scandalise at least one half of the old-firm.  So, if you don’t like what they are printing, stop buying it.

Conspiracies are an easy alternative to examining reality.  Stop subscribing to them and start seeing things as they are.