At the tail end of the recent episode I asked whether we should dismiss cases of false flag operations that were never carried out (as we kind of had done through the podcast), given that even if governments don’t engage in this particular actions, it certainly bolsters the case for false flags being more common than they are if you say “And look, they planned this one, and this one, and this one…”
Oh, and here’s the list of false flags we covered in that episode. Only about thirteen of the forty-two actually occurred, but still, the ones which did are pretty disturbing examples of what governments and branches of the government sometimes get up to.
So, apparently it is easy to troll conspiracy theorists, or so this article claims. My problem with the article starts with the very first sentence, “Once conspiracy theorists were mostly relegated to the fringes of society …” since historians of belief in conspiracy theories often claim that belief in conspiracy theories was a) more common in the past than we like to think and b) considered more normal than it is today. Still, summary articles about academic publications tend to not be the most accurate of pieces, so expect a review of the article sometime in the next week.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada’s own Tony Abbott (or is Tony Abbott Australia’s Stephen Harper? And where does John Key fit into this?) is worried about foreign interests who are infiltrating the oil industry. Yes, the threat is real, and it’s all down to those pesky Koch Brothers.
This is one of those cases where it really does seem as if there might be some sinister corporate activity going on. If not outright conspiracy, the activity of Koch Brothers is akin to a shadowy, nebulous spider (I could have added in even more adjectives to make the analogy even more cliched, believe me), controlling things from behind the scenes. The fact that a conservative government is worried about even more conservative billionaires from across the border causing trouble is delicious.
Meanwhile, the search for MH370 continues, with new claims about what happened, why it happened and where the flight went. There is a new documentary out which suggests the flight headed towards Antartica. The conspiracy theories around MH370 are legion, but now I suspect we can add in claims that the flight was directed to head to one of the last remaining Nazi outposts, probably to collect bullion, or that the Elder Ones sent for some of their disciples. Whatever the case, the lack of a wreckage means this story is likely to have legs for a long time to come.
Last Saturday a Māori trans woman had her arm broken by security whilst protesting the inclusion of Corrections and the Police at the Pride Parade ((Full disclosure: the protestor is a friend. Her name is not mentioned throughout for privacy reasons.)). The purpose of the protest was to point out that the inclusion of Police and Corrections in the Pride Parade was a travesty, given the poor treatment of trans people in our justice system. The attack on the protestor by security, and then police (who delayed her from getting medical treatment) did not generate the kind of outrage it should have done, because people decided that they were going to quibble over some of the fine details and also claim that the protest was “violent” and thus worthy of condemnation.
This surprised me. I was not at the parade, having decided to boycott it because of the inclusion of Police and Corrections (the Pride Parade, in its current state, does not represent Queer culture to me). Rather, I was at the house of a collective, some of which had gone to protest the parade and others of whom had stayed home to misanthropically play Cards Against Humanity. Like many people in the age of the smartphone, we were glued to Twitter and watched the event unfold in real time (which basically puts the lie to Steven Oates claim that the protestors have been lying about the timeline of what happened).
Reactions to the protest have been mixed, to say the very least. I, like many other radicalised people, watched the video of the protest and then the videos of the injured protestor being maltreated by both the police and the head of GABA, with disgust. The videos showed to us a perfectly normal protest and a response by security, police and a member of the queer community which was excessive and very likely racist and transphobic. Others, however, seemed to watch the same videos but saw what they took to be a violent protest, one which needed to be contained and one were the response was certainly excessive, but likely accidental.
Because of this difference in opinion there is a fracture between people who you would normally think would support one another, one which, I have to say, is getting worse rather than better. It’s also perfectly explicable; as psychologists will attest, we are primed to see things in specific ways, and unless you have had your worldview challenged in significant and prolonged ways, it can be hard to shake off your social conditioning and see things differently. Let me explain.
Aotearoa (New Zealand) is a colonised space in which the indigenous people, the Māori, are regularly maltreated. This is not in dispute; the stats are rather clear that Māori are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be sent to jail, more likely to die at an earlier age, et cetera et cetera. Unless you think Māori are just more criminal and have peculiarly weak constitutions, the only real explanation of their lot in life is that the system – our society – is geared against them on a structural level. Indeed, it is so structural that there needs be very little overt racism and discrimination against Māori (although there also tends to be an awful lot of it anyway); all that is required is that non-Māori, Pākehā people are treated better and that the minority group, Māori, are treated with some suspicion. Because Māori are a minority, and there is still a certain segregation in our society, Pākehā often don’t see actual cases of discrimination and hardly hear about it from their Māori friends. When such cases of discrimination are brought up, they are often downplayed as isolated incidents or examples of “bad eggs” in the system.
The response by Pākehā here is predicated to a large extent on Pākehā being primed to see society in a particular way. Speaking as a member of that community, we are brought up to believe in a equal, civil society, one in which people are treated fairly and one in which we do not fear the local constabulary. However, this is not the experience of most Māori, a position I have come to appreciate having spent time/being radicalised by Māori, who will point out that even cursory dealings with the police carry with them the abject fear of being abused or maltreated. Many Māori, for good reason, are brought up to distrust police and other services because of the long-standing structural discrimination displayed by these organisations towards Māori. Māori are primed to see modern Aotearoa (New Zealand) in a particular way.
Being primed to see things in a particular way is not quite the same thing as saying “We see what we want to see”, although, of course, they are related. We see what we want to see because we have been primed to want to see it that way. If you are Pākehā, then organisations like the Police are of no real threat to you. As such, you are primed to see them as non-threatening and you do not live in fear of them. You are also likely to have been primed to see protesting as a special kind of sport, one where respect, decency and politeness are the hallmark of proper protesting.
Which is where we get back to the Pride. Here’s the video of the event in question:
If you have been primed to see protests in a particular way, you may well watch that video and be shocked by the violence of the protestors. Or you might go “That’s not a violent protest; what are people on about?” I, for one, see it with the latter framing. Now, this is likely because I know the injured protestor (and think she is as threatening as a fly (but not a fruit fly)) but also because as someone invested in combatting the structural inequalities baked into our society, I realise some aggression in protest is necessary. That does not mean the protest is violent, just that the protest is discomforting, which it should be given the message.
Trying to persuade people to change their mind about the framing of an event, when that framing is predicated on how your background and assumptions makes you interpret evidence in particular ways, is difficult. It is also unnecessary, because there is a much simpler argument to be had about why the reaction to the protest was wrong, which is based entirely around ethical obligations. It just requires that people in positions of power realise what they are doing, which ends up being a problem if you are not particularly reflective about how you are likely primed to see things in particular ways.
Was it right for the Pride Parade organisers to invite Corrections and Police to march in the parade, especially in uniform? The answer is “No.” The Pride Parade presents itself as representing the queer community; the invitation for Police and Corrections as organisations to march in the parade spits in the face of queer people of colour and trans people in general, who are still routinely targeted by these organisations. If the Pride Parade is meant to represent the queer community but makes the space unsafe for sections of that community which are still suffering massive marginalisation and oppression from wider society, then not only is the Pride Parade disingenuous but it also files in the face of its own history, a history founded on challenging society.
So, no one is saying that, for example, individual queers who happen to be police officers should be prevented from taking part. All that is being argued here is that the organisations should not be welcomed to the Pride when said organisations still engage in structural discrimination. It is not enough to say “They are changing”. Rather, what needs to be said is that “They have changed” and as far as anyone can tell, that has not happened yet. The fact a Māori trans woman was brutalised first by security and then maltreated by the police is evidence of that. If you want to dispute that fact, just think about your pre-conceptions for a minute. If doing so makes you uncomfortable, then good. That’s the avenue to radicalisation and the realisation that for part of our population, the world really is a very scary place indeed.
White men all around the country want you to know that they think about Waitangi Day; I’m one of them!
Paul Moon, historian at AUT and a controversial figure when it comes to Aotearoa’s colonial history (he thinks the coming of Christianity was a good thing because it stopped the cannibalism, essentially) decides to have his cake and eat it in this somewhat bewildering New Zealand Herald article on the role of Te Tiriti O Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) today. It’s both an historical relic which has had its day and an important document here-and-now (apparently).
Talking of confused white men talking about the Treaty, Gareth Morgan’s recent book, tour and Herald articles are also equally bewildering. His Herald series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) sets out Morgan’s vision for a bicultural Aotearoa. However, as Morgan Godfrey has argued eloquently:
[Gareth Morgan] supports “rangatiratanga”, yet he opposes “unique political rights for Māori”. This is rather contradictory because rangatiratanga is a unique political right for Māori: it is the right to our “unique” indigenous systems. Surely, for the sake of credibility if not consistency, you cannot support something in one breath and then condemn it in the next. Yet Morgan seems intellectually unfazed.
Gareth Morgan went to Orewa, along with Don Brash, the other day to talk about the Treaty in the place where Brash gave his famously racist, Māori-bashing speech. Only 19 people turned up, which is kind of interesting, but to my mind the real meat is Brash’s constant refrain that Māori are a “stone age people”. ((He also talks about the “grievance industry”, which is shades of John Ansell.)) Don Brash is adamant he’s not racist, but his dialectic begs to differ.
In my “Do a good deed today” mode, I just want to put out a reminder to my readers in the media: David Rankin is not a Ngāpuhi elder. Rather, he is an old man who happens to be Ngāpuhi. He does not speak for his iwi and many in his iwi wish he would just shut up. So, when he talks about the threat of extremist Islam in Māoridom, just walk away; definitely do not report it. He’s just trying to get airtime in order to bolster his non-existent stature. He also has some fairly weird views about who came to Aotearoa first…
Why not end this round-up with some classic Pākehā racism in the form of a song. So, here’s “Puha and Pakeha”.
Long time listeners will be interested to hear that we’ve decided to go commercial… Well, we’ve decided to pay for podcast hosting because the system we had initially set up was a) producing a wonky RSS feed and b) running out of space. So, from this week onwards you can find the Podcaster’s Guide to the Conspriacy over at Podbean here. You might also want to update your RSS podcast app to point to: http://conspiracism.podbean.com/feed/
(Don’t worry about the iTunes feed; that hasn’t changed.)
One benefit of moving to a more bespoke solution is that Josh and I will finally get to see just how few of you are listening. Tune in next week when we just sigh and ask “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
Oh, and this week’s episode can be listened to via this funky HTML5 player!
Welcome, Fortean Times readers! (and welcome back readers who predate my brief claim to fame, ala having written an article for the February 2105 issue of FT). If you liked that article you might like to buy (or suggest your library buy) my book, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories. You might also be interested in the podcast I co-host, The Podcaster’s Guide to the Conspiracy
Meanwhile, in conspiracy news…
In local news the big question of the week is “When did the PM find out about the Mike Sabin allegations?” This question follows on from other such questions like “When did the PM find out that a dirty politics operation was being run from his office?” and “When did the PM find out that the person he appointed run the GCSB was a close, childhood friend?” When the PM doesn’t know things you think the PM ought to know, it’s fair to ask whether the denials are actually the product of a conspiracy to deceive.
Sticking with politics and deceitful Prime Ministers, the ongoing investigation into pedophilia in the UK just keeps getting worse. Margaret Thatcher, beloved on the Right, might well have had a part in trying to keep secret the allegations against Peter Morrison and Peter Hayman. Unlike the John Key situation, where it seems at least possible that the Government is just incompetent, these cases seem to show that there existed an active conspiracy to hide abhorrent behaviour on the part of people who supported or were in the government of the day.
Moving on, or rather backwards, when it comes to 9/11 conspiracy theories, the notion that someone in the US Establishment had prior knowledge of the attacks or helped foment them is a common thread to some 9/11 Truth/Inside Job hypotheses. When Bush was in power everyone pointed towards the New American Century document; now that Obama is the President of the United States people are looking at his appointees and working out whether they had something to do with the September 11th attacks. Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense nominee, is the latest person to be vetted. Why? Well, because, like many people in the establishment, Carter has written on American foreign policy and imagined just how a terrorist attack might change or motivate that policy. It’s claims like this which, for certain elements of the Truther community, signals that people like Ashton Carter were in on 9/11. This particular article, however, gets bonus points for its probability estimates that Al-Qaeda hijackers could really have been able to pull of 9/11. As they say, “ONE IN A QUINTILLION”.
“I think privacy is actually overvalued!” says Court of Appeals judge in the US. Well, Judge Richard Posner, the Government of the United States would tend to agree with you. Seriously, though, there is a debate going on in the US at the moment about the NSA’s data collection policies and opposite attempts by people and corporations to keep their privacy, and it seems that the old policy of “Deny that its happening” (the “It turned out to be warranted!” conspiracy theory about America spying on everyone) is going to turn into “Business as usual!”
Here’s a tale of two competing conspiracy theories. According to local conspiracy theorist celebrity, Trevor Loudon (who mostly writes about how Marxists control America), John McCain is working behind the scenes to remove Tea Partiers from crucial positions in the GOP, particularly in Arizona. This wouldn’t surprise me at all, given how toxic the Tea Party seems to be in relationship to the more moderate Republicans. Still, if true, it probably does count as a conspiracy against the Tea Party.
However, if they chose to do so, the Koch brothers have enough wealth to buy the total advertising time of every television and radio station in America—meaning they could exercise their right to “free speech” by silencing every other voice in the country. [WSWS]
Now, some political scientists will happily claim that there’s precious little evidence that money actually buys elections. Still, 900 million…
Not really about conspiracy theories (if you listen to the end of the interview I asked him a question about Doctor Who conspiracy theories), but on Tuesday I interviewed Peter Davison, aka the Fifth Doctor. You can find out why by reading the resulting article here.