The prototypical pedophilia conspiracy theory we didn't believe at all is the Comet Ping Pong one, which was appropriate.
Except the proportion of paedophile priests is about the same as the proportion of paedophiles in the general population. There are more paedophiles in schools and social services than in religious organisations - and there have even been more convictions of teachers and social workers, at least tin the UK. The reason you think of the Catholic Church this way is BECAUSE it got more media attention earlier than elsewhere. A surprising number of people the UK do not know about the biggest big paedophile scandal in the country, the Islington one, that was huge, and at least one politician who was responsible for the failure to investigate went on to have a successful career in politics (the only time it set back her career at all was when Blair wanted to make her minister for children there was a backlash)
I doubt you have any reliable statistics about this, given how many victims keep silent out of fear.
But in any case, the moral failure of the church was not the existence of individual abusers (which indeed can exist anywhere in society), but how on an institutional level known abusers were protected by the curch. Everyone who was part of the cover-up (which went all the way to the top) is complicit.
I think what earned the Catholic Church their reputation was that the church was actively involved in protecting known pedophiles and repeatedly shuffling them around effectively giving them an endless supply of fresh victims while suppressing the voices of many of the children brave enough to come forward. The problem with the church isn't that pedos exist there, but that they've been very often supported and defended and their actions covered up in ways that don't (and often couldn't) happen in schools.
If they had not trafficked minors as well I wonder whether it would ever have been exposed. It makes me wonder what else is going on.
Such things have existed for millennia. What's more surprising is that people claim to be surprised.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
I’m not sure if “I’m just a cryptozoologist” is much of a vindication.
No, but we did call people conspiracy theorists for believing the thing Snowden subsequently showed to be real.
Security state loyalists were not nearly as influential in online discourse back then, as they are now. Probably astroturfing, AI and algorithmic amplification plays a part in that.
You say that like it isn't what happened.
If anything there were more security state loyalists in the first years after 9/11 than there are now.
That not a philosophically supportable statement. "There's insufficient evidence to warrant belief in your claim" is more realistic.