Abacus Data: 'We recently completed nationwide surveying among 1500 Canadians. The focus was on the levels of trust people have in institutional sources of information, and belief in conspiracy theories. This is the second in a series called “Trust & Facts: What Canadians Believe”
'• 44% (the equivalent of 13 million adults) believe “big events like wars, recessions and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people working in secret against us”. Almost as many agree “much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places'
Small groups, nefarious plans, bad outcomes...
Beyond politicians, generally speaking, which are a small group of people who do a splendid job messing up economies, abusing the polity, and mismanaging power, there are other interrelated cabals, usually fantastically wealthy and powerful, that would justify 44% of Canadians' conviction, here presented as fantasy. (Just look south of the border at the collusion between the FBI, the Clinton machine, and the media in 2016 for one such 'small group' that would meet the criteria and validate this 'conspiracy theory'.
For starters (assuming the political elite in Ottawa or Washington or Brussels or Beijing, etc., don't count) there is the military industrial complex called out by JFK; the same that Eisenhower warned Americans about.
There's Big Pharma, which over the past 2 years worked in league with Big Government and Big Media to generate hysteria over a flu virus; which spent hundreds of millions over the past three years buying favorable coverage, hid the adverse effects in its pre-trials, & lied consistently about the efficacy of their gene therapies.
There's the US State Department and the CIA, which routinely redraws the world map, who armed and trained jihadists in southern Syria (Operation Timber Sycamore) and effectively created ISIS (echoing their creation of Al Qaeda).
There is the small group of establishment hacks (Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et co) in Washington who lied about weapons of mass destruction and started a 20-year war in Iraq, ultimately dogging the US for a generation & turning much of the world against the West.
There is, of course, World Economic Forum (discussed below) that coordinates on massive global initiatives, which frequently are dehumanizing, authoritarian, and elitist.
There is undoubtedly a technocratic / managerial class, which when compared to the general population on a numerical basis, is a "small group"; one that works in secret for itself and against the common people. That some people collude to bring about a particular ends is a conspiracy, and the theory that there are small, powerful groups that routinely conspire is hardly foolhardy.
'• 37% (or 11 million) think “there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views. This is an articulation of what is commonly referred to as replacement theory.'
Realpolitik is a conspiracy theory now? Never mind the fact that woke capital likes cheap labor and is keen to suppress citizen wages by importing foreign nationals. The Democrats and race-based lobby groups (the National Council of La Raza /UnidosUS, VotoLatino, etc.) have explicitly called for Latin Americans amongst others to illegally & or legally flood into the United States to join their ranks. They need members and, in the case of the Dems, to form a new voting bloc granted the American left lost the working-class vote (just as the NDP has lost the working-class voter in Canada). The Trudeau Liberals & NDP are simply taking a page out of the same playbook. They recognize, for instance, that Indian immigrants tend to vote Liberal (The Star) along with other 'New Canadians' (CBC).
'• 20% believe it is definitely or probably true that “the World Economic Forum is a group of global elites with a secretive strategy to impose their ideas on the world.”'
Uh, how is this in any way a conspiracy theory? According to the WEF's mission statement, "The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas." What are the foremost leaders of society across the world other than "global elites"? They're also not just meeting up for fun. The objective is to impose their ideas in the world or, as phrased in the WEF mission statement, "We believe that progress happens by bringing together people...who have the drive and the influence to make positive change." They're convening meetings to coordinate on ideas that these leaders will in turn impose on the people they lead.
Moreover: Have the people who framed these categories over at Abacus read Klaus Schwab's books? Have they not seen the WEF's commercials concerning the Great Reset? Have they not heard Schwab boast about penetrating the Trudeau cabinet?
If the statements they present as "conspiratorial" are any indication, Bruce Anderson & David Coletto of Abacus Data are clearly both detached from reality or framing the issues of distrust in bad faith, thereby justifying more distrust in our institutions and media.
They write:
'Canadians who want to believe that Canadian society is relatively unaffected by conspiracy thinking will find little comfort in these results. Millions believe that our lives are controlled by secret plots to undermine our interests.
'That such beliefs correlate strongly with the instinct to mistrust what media report and what governments say –is a challenge that threatens all institutions that depend on an informed body politic and is like a poison affecting our civil discourse. Only recently we’ve witnessed how a massive demand for the protection offered by Covid 19 vaccines fostered a strenuous effort by those who disbelieve government and media to deny the value of those same vaccines...'
It's dangerous, thinks Bruce and David, that some Canadians might have distrusted: Mendicino the first, fifth, or eighth time he lied; Tam when she said masks don't work or when she changed her mind; Trudeau when he lied about his family making money off of WE Charity or about the SNC Lavalin Scandal; Canadian State Media when it lied about and smeared the Freedom Convoy; etc. It is certainly a challenge when the People don't trust the powerful and the apparatchiks that buttress them, but not a challenge for democracy. It is a challenge for the corrupt who are now exposed; those for whom it seems Abacus' big brains carry water.