I’ve never had much time to spare for the various ‘tin foil hatters’ of this world. I’ve no time for flat earthers, ‘chemtrails’ enthusiasts, Zionist plot types, HAARP obsessives, Illuminati/New World Order fanatics, amateur eschatologists or any of the various other flavours of conspiracy theorists out there. I also have little but mockery of the science-light lunacy of anti-vaccination or claims that the moon landing was faked or the laughable attempts to divert attention away from the real cause of 9/11 to whatever is the ‘9/11 Truther’s’ blame target of the month might be.

I have been consistent in my dislike of tin foil hattery and I hold that view for several reasons. Firstly it’s a case of ‘been there done that’ as I used to spend many a happy lunch hour arguing online with these nutters and have seen just how little real evidence these fools have to back up their ideas. It’s been proven to me by engaging with ‘conspiraloons’ that they are not brave researchers who have discovered some ‘secret’ knowledge, but often woefully misguided individuals who cling onto bad ideas with all the craziness of a religious extremist. The second reason is that conspiracy theories are all too often the lies that travel around the world before the truth has got out of bed. They sound plausible to the uneducated and the unwary and to some may seem like an easy answer to very tough questions or social or political problems. Because of this seeming plausibility, conspiracy theories can slither their way out of the small group of fraggles that believe in them and into the wider world, sometimes causing great damage or even violence. Conspiracy theories have also been potent weapons in the hands of tyrants such as the Nazis, the Communists and the Islamists and have been used to promote both political obedience and ultimately genocide.

There is a third reason, a much more personal one why I dislike conspiracy theories is that quoting them damages ones credibility. There are a number of really good writers on social and political issues out there in the alt media whose commentary on certain issues may be correct, but the moment they push a conspiracy theory that I know to be false, I switch off. I will never reference that source or link to it. I really don’t want to be that person who promotes a load of old bollocks just because it was persuasively written by an author who might have been correct on some other matter. I take the view that if a person can be so stupid or careless to promote tin foil hattery in one article then it causes me to question the veracity of much else they might have written. Also those of us with political enemies do not wish to give these enemies any ammunition by quoting the sort of complete and utter bollocks that some others may happily share.

A good example of a conspiracy theory that has a bad outcome is one that is currently getting a lot of exposure is the consipiracy theory about health damage caused by 5G telecommunications. This particular conspiracy theory has been doing the rounds for a number of years now, ever since plans for this new network were planned. It’s adherents come from a similar pool of fools as used to believe that mobile phone masts and mobile phone handsets cause cancer. This particular type of conspiralunacy is very easily countered by anyone with a basic knowledge of radio frequencies, radio wave propagation and Newton’s Inverse Square Law. I’ve got a radio qualification, only a very low level one but even I an ‘M3’ can see the holes in the 5G conspiracy theory.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who don’t have such knowledge and who have been bamboozled by those further into the 5G cult who use scientific sounding words and phrases that have no basis in science itself. One conspiraloon in particular seems to have taken it into their heads to take on board the laughably idiotic idea that 5G is a cause of Coronavirus and set fire to a mobile phone tower in the mistaken belief that they are ‘helping’ in the current situation.

Nothing could be further from the actual truth. The sort of idiot who believes that 5G is a dangerous thing don’t seem to have taken into account that humans have been living with artifically generated radio waves for over 100 years now and the physics and effects of radio at various frequencies has been intensively studied. Radio frequencies, including the millimetre wave Super High Frequencies that are above 3GHz or 3000MHz have been used for decades for point to point telecommunications links and some of the lower frequencies that the conspiraloons moan about are not much different from the frequency bands used to broadcast television on.

Now I’m not denying that RF can cause damage. Radio waves can, but only in certain circumstances and at certain power levels be a source of concern. This is why nobody in their right mind holds onto an antenna when it’s connected to a high power transmitter, why TV transmitters go on reduced power whilst antenna work is being carried out on a transmitter tower and why X and Cosmic Rays are a known cumalative health hazard. However, there’s no good reason why anybody would hang onto an antenna connected to a 100w transmitter just as there’s no good reason to stick a fork into a mains outlet, you’ll get burned. Also those working on transmitter towers are a good deal closer to the business end of a transmitter antenna than would normally be the case so power is reduced to protect those working a few dozen feet away from a TV antenna that might be in normal service kicking out nearly a megawatt. X Rays and Cosmic Rays are ionising radiation unlike the much lower frequencies that are non-ionising radiation. However these Cosmic and X Ray frequencies are way way above anything that 5G will be operating on and are well above the visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum and are of little concern to the majority of us who are not radiologists or astronauts.

Devices that operate in the Super High Frequency or upper UHF parts of the RF spectrum are working with frequencies that are extremely easily attenuated, proposed 5G frequencies can be dissipated by something as basic as mist and cloud, are of extremely short range and are very fragile as radio waves go. An HF signal in the 3 to 30 MHz range can take an awful lot of pounding with regards to interference and natural attenuation but higher frequencies cannot. It is this short range in the Super High Frequency part of the spectrum that makes it so useful for mobile devices. With UHF cell towers in the 900 to 1800 MHz part of the spectrum you get a cell that can be quite geographically large in its coverage which of course limits the number of devices that can use that particular cell. You can’t add more cell base stations at these frequencies as they would interfere with one another. If you use much shorter waves then you can put more cells, running at less transmitter power than a UHF cell base station in a geographical area which allows for more devices to be used in that area.

5G is not what the conspiraloons claim it to be. It is a method of coping what is likely to be a massive need for consumers to connect wirelessly to the internet and a method that allows this growth to happen without causing co-channel interference between base stations. That’s all.

What 5G is not is a form of ‘mind control’ or a way of ‘cooking humans brains’ or ‘wiping out wildlife’ or even creating or modifying a virus. All of such claims are complete and utter bollocks of the highest order.

The 5G nutters have done an extremely stupid thing, if indeed it is them behind the arson attack on a cell phone tower,is down to them and its not common or garden terrorism targeted at UK infrastructure, which is possible. The 5G nutters are fools influencing other fools and they need to be countered.

I don’t believe that censoring such idiots is the way to go, although it looks as if censorship of these nutters is what the big tech platforms will do. Instead I believe in challenging them on their bullshit just as flat Earthers, anti vaxxers and Zionist plot types also need to be challenged, disproved and if necessary, merciliessly mocked. Countering the conspiraloons is job that requires more speech in order to drive out these bad ideas, more people to bring the science to the table to disprove the bullshit of the conspiraloons. Conspiracy theory and the countering of it is a classic example of how freedom of speech can be used to drag bad ideas into the sunlight, debate them and discard them when they are proven wrong.

The ultimate answer to conspiracy theorising is not to censor such people. That could be counterproductive as the conspiraloons might then think they are onto something and maybe do something worse, like shoot up a pizza parlour or commit an act of arson on the telecommunications network for example. The real answer to the problem of conspiraloons lies in increased literacy across society about such matters as science, politics, faith, history and much more. With more people literate in these areas then the pool of potential recruits to things like the 5G conspiracy theory will become more and more shallow.

I treat, and would advise others to treat the 5G nutters with the same level of contempt and derision as one would treat a person who still believes that Erich Von Daniken is a serious and credible researcher. Show them where they are wrong and then laugh at them.