Conspiracy Theories Linked To Pathological Behaviour

The purpose of this post is show how irrational beliefs in conspiracy theories can lead to pathological behaviours. As a psychology graduate and someone who recently went through a Psychotic episode I feel like it's important to talk about this subject. Most people who look up conspiracies to find hidden truth or meaning in life often end up depressed and paranoid. Below are a few cases of people who's pathological behaviours and irrational belief in conspiracies caused them to murder innocent people.

David Crowley


David Crowley (soldier & filmmaker) came back from the Army in Afghanistan bent on making a movie called “Gray State.” In his film a foreign totalitarian state conquers the U.S. While some Americans submit and go on with their lives, others are defiant patriotic resisters. Crowley counted on being famous and rich after his frightening explosive trailer for the film attracted attention and money, especially after praise from conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones.

But interested producers didn’t offer Crowley a contract. Over the years that he worked on his film idea, he was losing his grip on reality, and just before Christmas 2014, he killed his wife and 9-year-old daughter, then himself. Alt-right and other figures believe he was killed by the government to stop his film.

Kirby Farrell an author for Psychology Today wrote a detailed article about his life:

The film “Gray State” is a conspiracy fantasy. Armed heroic resisters combat a vicious juggernaut like “big government.” Unlike ordinary thinking, conspiracy theories assume the conspiracy is always malicious rather than a result of, say, insecurity, inaccurate data, or dumb luck. In "Gray State" as in conspiracy theory, there’s no interest in individual characters or motivation. This seems to be the main reason interested producers turned down the project. The idea owes much to stereotyped rightwing conspiracy theorists.



On an infowars interview Crowley said that this movie was initially “the ultimate alex Jones Film”

In Crowley’s journal, he wrote about his ambitions in general (to have a screenplay produced by 2016, to be a millionaire by 2017), his feelings for [his wife] Komel (“God I love that woman. Strong, beautiful, ferocious, and deadly intelligent”), and his determination to be a good father. As the entries progress, however, insights appear to arrive unbidden and to impose themselves on him. “I’m expecting to wake up somebody else,” he wrote. “Vast personality changes are happening too fast to write about every day.” And: “I am being prepped for some slide into oblivion or destiny.” Crowley was losing his mind, and he didn’t seem to know it.

“As if inhabiting the world he was creating,” says Wilkinson, ” When the interested producers finally turned down the script, a friend “said that he didn’t think David knew ‘how to cope with failure on this scale.’ He went on, ‘In my heart I feel like the stress, the message, the story, and his thought process caused his world of fiction and reality to blur.”

Just before Christmas in 2014, after episodes of tears and despairing, psychotic journal entries, Crowley shot his wife Komel and 9-year-old daughter as they lay before their Christmas tree. He then wrote “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) on the living room wall with his bloody hands, and killed himself.

Austin Harrouff


In 2016 a 19-year-old Florida State University student Austin Harrouff lost his mind after storming out of a restaurant , entered into an open garage door where he stabbed a couple to death then tried to eat part of one victim’s face.

Sherriff William Snyder tells people that the first deputy arrived at the scene in the driveway of the couple’sTequesta home and “the suspect was on top of our victim, clutching him in a bear hug and biting him in the face.”

“[The deputy] shot him with a taser … that didn’t work,” he says. “Another deputy got there, two deputies, and they engaged the suspect and they said they used every bit of strength they had.”

He added: “It was an impossible task to get him off of the victim. And another officer from a nearby municipality arrived and deployed a dog on him to try to get him off. Then finally, after minutes of fighting, they were able to get the offender off of the victim, but the victim was dead.”

two years prior to the incident Harrouff casually uploaded videos of himself singing & giving advice on youtube.

In an interview when Dr. Phil asked him about his strange behaviour prior to the attack, Harrouff responded saying that he started getting super serious about life , talking about religion like a extremist and looked into weird conspiracy theories like the Illuminati , at that point he slowly departed from his friends & social life.

He also recall having disturbing dreams of being worshiped and believed he had superhuman gifts , which all seems to be clear signs of paranoia , delusions and schizophrenia.

Jarred & Amanda Miller

The 2014 Las Vegas shootings occurred on June 8, 2014 in northeastern Las Vegas, Nevada, when a married couple, Jerad and Amanda Miller, committed a shooting spree in which five people died, including themselves. The couple, who espoused extreme anti-government views, first killed two Las Vegas police officers at a restaurant before fleeing into a Walmart, where they killed an intervening armed civilian. The couple died after engaging responding officers in a shootout; police shot and killed Jerad, while Amanda committed suicide after being wounded.

The shooting of two Las Vegas police officers on Sunday morning at CiCi’s pizza place was a “false flag” operation staged by the US government, according to Alex Jones, the talk radio host, conspiracy theorist and founder of the website InfoWars.

Ironically it turned out Jerad and Amanda Miller, the two alleged shooters, were actually vocal fans of InfoWars.com, and, more than that Jerad had as early as 2012 posted on the site about killing police officers.
Miller’s post, which is from May in that year, is titled 'The Police (To Kill Or Not To Kill)'. Miller discusses, at length, encounters he’d had with police officers.

planet.infowars.com...

Jerad and Amanda Miller also frequently posted links to InfoWars to their Facebook pages. They appear to have been believers in a wide range of conspiracy theories and anti-government beliefs championed by Alex Jones.

Paul Ciancia

At the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on November 1, 2013 Paul Anthony Ciancia aged 23 started shooting at the airport with a rifle, which killed a U.S. government TSA officer as well as injuring a few others as well. The gunmen opened fire at LAX and the shooting prompted the police to open fire on Paul Anthony Ciancia, which left the handcuffed gunman bloodied on the floor after being shot four times. The scene had a total lockdown.

Paul Ciancia was a believer in the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy made famous by radiohost Alex Jones , Paul Ciancia was also against idea of a totalitarian police state a view that was shared among many conspiracy theorists including David Icke.

Richard Poplawski

On Saturday, April 4, 2009 Richard Poplawski opened fire on two Pittsburgh Police officers , As the two officers entered the home, Poplawski was reportedly wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait". Sciullo one of the police officers at the scene was immediately shot in the head. Almost immediately thereafter, Officer Mayhle was also shot in the head.

Three police officers were ultimately confirmed dead, and another two were seriously injured.

According to Pittsburgh Police Chief, Nathan Harper, Poplawski was armed with a semi-automatic AK-47-style rifle, a shotgun and three handguns , protected by a bulletproof vest. According to police and witnesses, he held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them. More than 600 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski. The incident was the second-deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since the September 11 attacks.

Mark Potok, a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which had reviewed Poplawski's internet postings, stated that "he believed the Jews were coming, the Jews controlled society” and that Poplawski also frequently visited and occasionally posted on Alex Jones' Infowars website.”

Poplawski posted that he believed that:

"the federal government, mainstream media, and banking system in these United States are strongly under the influence of -- if not completely controlled by -- Zionist interest. An economic collapse of the financial system is inevitable, bringing with it some degree of civil unrest if not outright balkanization of the continental US, civil/revolutionary/racial war . . . This collapse is likely engineered by the elite Jewish powers that be in order to make for a power and asset grab."

Well thank you so much blue pill. So are you trying to paint everybody who questions the official Narrative of governments and the elite as a potential murderer or loon?

This comes across as a major propaganda piece and not much more. PTSD and ADHD drugged individuals do weird things, and Alex Jones is blamed? Conspiracy Theory is blamed?

Spin, spin, spin.

a reply to: dashen

No, it looks like people who had major mental health issues who gravitated to extremes in conspiracy theories. Made them a core part of their soul and let it consume the rest to the point where they rationalized killing people who had nothing to do with the conspiracy theories. Except for the first two, they are of how obsessed people can lead to their own destruction or someone who completely just lost all senses and went full zombie.

originally posted by: Salander
This comes across as a major propaganda piece and not much more. PTSD and ADHD drugged individuals do weird things, and Alex Jones is blamed? Conspiracy Theory is blamed?

Spin, spin, spin.

Yes interesting first post.

That zombie face eater from your op was on bath salts btw, not from reading ATS because we're bored, and
you guys crashed the economy.

a reply to: TheBluePill

Problem is things like on 9/11 anyone in construction who has done demolition,or rough grading would know the the building was set with thermite by a proffesional demolition crew,and that an airliner hitting high grade steel would do anything but splat on the structures,to bend steel must be a sustained high heat,which could not be generated by diesel or aviation fuel,funny just had this conversation,I told this to a Psych Dr after 911,he said I needed further study lol,I told him he should look beyond his nose

a reply to: TheBluePill

Operative word: "Florida"

Correlation does not prove causation. More data is needed to establish a connection. One or two anecdotal cases does not mean very much.

It's my understanding that "conspiracy theories" were perfectly normal, commonplace things... before the CIA got involved in the 70's.
Now suddenly anyone who questions the MSM is grouped in with face-eating drug users?


How far we've fallen.

This post is rather pathetic. But the purpose behind it, that could be an interesting story.

Just a massive SnF for a amazing thread, I found it very interesting.

Thanks.

You forgot to mention Alex Jones in the story about Austin Harrouff.

Below are a few cases of people who's pathological behaviours and irrational belief in conspiracies caused them to murder innocent people.

You can take those "few cases," turn them sideways, and put them into a very dark place. "Pathological behaviours and irrational belief" are ailments of the mind, and can act as the foundation to pervert anything that a person associates themselves with. Claiming that conspiracies are to blame is idiotic.

a reply to: TheBluePill

Very interesting OP.

This coincides with a piece I was reading about conspiracy theories and how it relates to intelligence/education, proneness to paranoia, feelings of helplessness, etc.

It's very difficult to be interested in conspiracy theories in general when you are surrounded by people with such issues. We cannot come together to work on real conspiracies if the majority of the community is going-on about the paranoid/loony conspiracies that are not rooted in reality.

originally posted by: eisegesis

Below are a few cases of people who's pathological behaviours and irrational belief in conspiracies caused them to murder innocent people.

You can take those "few cases," turn them sideways, and put them into a very dark place. The problem is, "pathological behaviours and irrational belief," an ailment of the mind, can act as the foundation to pervert anything that a person associates themselves with. Claiming that conspiracies are to blame is idiotic.

It's not that conspiracies are to blame. What's to blame is the way people think.

Certain types of people are prone to believe in or are drawn towards conspiracies.

a reply to: introvert



And in today's society of "being connected" as they walk right by oblivious to the Self next to them, they only give a squirt if Your conspiracy theory matches theirs or their interests. Like folks w/bad backs, You wouldn't ever know unless You had ever suffered a 'bad back' What Lao Tzu meant when He chiseled out the Tao Te Ching...

But what do I know, My only friends are My dogs and if I get them to the dog park and feed them then I am the 'bee's knees' This freedom allows Me think what I want about whichever C.T. I look into.

It appears these folks centralized their paranoia... Any 'nut' knows NOT to grow just one root..

Stay Hydrated... (But not 'tap water' that has Fluoride which dumbs You down)

I think that the term conspiracy theories in this instance could be misconstrued as a pathological belief that they are true.
By that I mean the majority of people see conspiracy theories as entertaining another explanation of available evidence. To take it to the extremes of utter belief, therein lies the madness. And that is why people who take them to the extremes, like murdering or completely altering their lives are in the miniscule minority.
This is not new. It has been going on since man learned he had power to control others, especially when organised religion came on the scene, and just as in the ancient times there are individuals that would take their actions to the extreme.

OP is involved in a high level elite
conspiracy to make his ignorance mine.