Robert Blaskiewicz, writing for The Skeptical Inquirer, says something I wish all of us- bloggers especially- would always keep in the front of our minds:
"One of the characteristics of a self-sustaining conspiracy theory is an alternative set of facts that are exclusive to the conspiracist narrative. These claims of facts are repeated endlessly, and any explanation that does not accept these assertions as true is rejected out of hand."
I have run across this kind of circular thinking endlessly: in specious claims that Native Americans are really the descendants of Muslim explorers and their converts, for example. Another good example is the "anti-vaxer" narrative in which fanatics use psuedo-science to "prove" that parents should not vaccinate their children.
The article from which I drew this quote, You Can't Handle the Truthiness: A Night Out with the 911 Truth Committee, is here.
UPDATE:
Davis Thomas, also writing for The Skeptical Inquirer, adds this slightly pithier definition:
Soon, a picture emerged of a massive pseudoscientific movement based on faulty physics, cherry-picked data, and demonization of opponents as complicit in the “conspiracy.”
That's a good bit less polite than Mr. Blaskiewicz' description, but on point. Mr. Thomas' article, How I Debated a 911 Truther and Survived, is here.
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