Category: General

Some conspiracy theorists have taken a very “philosophical” approach in how they define conspiracy theories. For example, Lyndon LaRouche, sometime North American presidential candidate and doyen of the far right, defines a “conspiracy” as:

“Conspiracy essentially means either a common purpose, a common philosophical and practical purpose, or a set of common and conflicting purposes which cause people to work together for common ends as well as conflicting ones,’’ explains Lyndon LaRouche. “And conspiracy is a general term which can mean a great number of things. One can’t say, ‘There is a conspiracy.’ One has to say, ‘What do you mean by a conspiracy? What kind?'””

For LaRouche, to engage in a conspiracy is to take onboard and work towards or for some philosophical project or objective. LaRouche imagines a world torn between hedonistic Empiricism and rational Idealism, with the proponents of the former being the malacious, malignant Conspiracy Theorists and the latter, which include such luminaries as himself defending Truth, Justice and, naturally, the American Way. Both sides engage in conspiratorial behaviour to achieve their aims.

LaRouche is representative of a certain group of conspiracy theorists, those who believe in, to coin a phrase, “all-embracing” or global conspiracy theories. Such conspiracy theories posit explanations of events in the world where everything is part and parcel of some conspiracy. Such conspiracy theories usually posit shadowy cabals of co-conspirators, made up of Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jews, Mole people, the Roman Catholic Church and the like. These shadowy cabals are vast collectives of “Them,” a set of mysterious others who run the world and are, aside from the conspiracy theorists themselves, the only ones who really know why things happen and for what purpose.

[I decided against talking about LaRouche and his wacky all-embracing conspiracy theory because, well, it was proving too hard to succinctly deal with that brand of theorising. I can see why people like Robin Ramsay call LaRouche and his ilk a distraction from the real business of analysing conspiracy theories; it’s not that LaRouche is purposefully tainting the pool but, rather, his brand of conspiracy theory is just so different from the more mundane and plausible political instances that trying to analyse of both is difficult. Frankly, the theories of LaRouche and his ilk (I’m looking at you, David Icke) are probably best suited to a sociological or psychological analysis. I realise this is a cop-out on my part and I feel bad about it, but (and there is always a but, isn’t there); I can always come back to this material post the thesis.]

Good news, everyone!

I’ve been invited back to do a regular slot on 95bFM ((For those of you who have memories, you might recall that I was talking about doing a Dentith Files-inspired podcast (which I was going to call “The File”). I did spent some time trying to work out how to do justice to a podcast; I’d wanted to do something pithy and short rather than ramble on for half an hour. The ideas I had kept on getting more and more elaborate, requiring additional voice talent, a sound engineer (I have a tame one at hand, actually) and, given the laws of audio design, would have required a recording session of about an hour to get give minutes of content. Needless to say, that plan went on the back-burner. My supervisors would have had hysterics (although one of them would also insist on being involved in such a recording endeavour). That work won’t go entirely to waste; more news on that should everything go to plan over the next few months.)). The super duper good news is that it’s a weekly gig. The less super news is that it is every Thursday at the rather early time of 7:45AM.

That is all; your regularly scheduled programme of random bits of unused thesis will resume shortly.

The notion of what a conspiracy is, I think, not a particularly problematic concept to disentangle, but when it comes to talk of theories, I think we run into problems.

A theory can be:

1. Mere speculation,
2. An hypothesis,
3. A system of rules or principles or
4. An explanation

We are not always clear by what we mean when we say “x is a theory” or “It’s a kind of y theory.” For example, we do not (usually) say “That’s just a theory!” when we talk about, say, Gravitational Theory; if I were express such a sentiment in an exchange, then I would, I think it is fair to say, be accusing you of presenting a theory of Gravity rather than the theory of Gravity. I would be singling out your talk of a theory of Gravity as being something other that the received view.

Whilst I think it is clear the notion of “theory” in use when we talk about conspiracy theories is theory-qua-explanation, I think it would be worthwhile to look at the speculative sense of “theory.”

Not all conspiracy theories are offered as the explanation of an event but rather as an hypothetical explanation, one which expresses the possibility, rather than asserts, that a conspiracy was a or the cause of some event. In this sense a conspiracy theory is presented as \textit{an} explanation which could also be the explanation.

As a conspiracy theory theorist who is interested in conspiracy theories I will often speculate that an event could have come about due to the actions of a cabal of co-conspirators, but the fact of such speculation does not entail on my part (nor suggest, really) that I believe that the conspiracy theory I am expressing is anything more than an intellectual fancy. To merely speculate about the existence of some conspiracy is not something which we should be concerned about; indeed, it is likely that not being willing to speculate about the existence of conspiracies is, in itself, an intellectual vice ((Indeed, Charles Pigden in “Complots of Mischief” presents an argument for this, claiming that as we know that conspiracies have occurred and been influential in history we should, at least, entertain the possibility that they might occur again (p. 165-6).)).

That being said, I think most people, when they cite a conspiracy theory, are not just speculating about some conspiracy theory but rather they are asserting what they take is the credible explanation of the event.

[Whilst I think there is something interesting to say about what the “theory” in “conspiracy theory” refers to, it doesn’t suit the flow of the introduction to my thesis at this stage. I might resurrect this discussion in chapter two.]

Clarke, in his 2007 paper “Conspiracy Theories and the Internet: Controlled Demolition and Arrested Development,” presents his own definition of a conspiracy theory which phrases them with respect to degenerating research programmes.

A particular conspiracy theory needs at least to involve the identification of a specific conspiratorial group and to involve the specification at least one motive to explain that group’s conspiratorial activities before the research programme formed around that theory can be assessed as progressive or degenerative.” (p. 170])

The language Clarke chooses to use here does seem to suggest that the conspiracy theory might get ad hoc modifications to protect the theory from criticism. Now, it could be argued that I am being unfair here, treating Clarke’s words in an uncharitable sense; perhaps he merely means that conspiracy theories, as rival explanations, set themselves up to be able to withstand criticism from the received account.

Indeed, he goes on to say:

A conspiracy theorist typically begins by identifying anomalies in a received view. This motivates further investigation, which can lead to the discovery of further anomalies and may prompt the suspicion that the received view is a cover story that has been promoted by a group of conspirators, in order to prevent the general public from finding out the truth. The last step in this developmental sequence is that an alternative explanation is postulated. It is only when an alternative explanatory theory has been postulated that we are in a position to begin assessing whether that alternative explanatory theory is at the core of a progressive or a degenerating research programme. (p. 171)

This would suggest that Clarke thinks conspiracy theories could be progressive research programmes after all, but I think he he rules this possibility out. Conspiracy theory, for Clarke, is a pejorative term; any theory of an event’s occurrence that cites a conspiracy as its cause which turns out to be the explanation will come to be considered to be some kind of official theory rather than a conspiracy theory. Clarke once again uses the example of Watergate; Woodward and Bernstein’s research into the Watergate scandal was an example of a progressive research programme and their proposed account was about conspiratorial activity, but as the research programme turned out to be progressive rather than degenerating it became an official theory (p. 168).

Clarke seems to be suggesting, in this instance, that conspiracy theories can be part of a progressive research programme, just not progressive research programmes themselves. Watergate may be a good example of this; whilst the Watergate scandal usually centres around the lies and cover-ups of Richard Nixon, which are taken to indicate the kind of thing we expect from someone involved in a conspiracy theory, the investigation of the events of June 17th, 1972 was not so much an investigation into a conspiracy theories but rather an investigation into what happened at the Watergate Hotel. The discovery of a conspiracy was but one part of the larger story. Watergate, the official theory, has what might be considered a conspiracy theory as a part of it, but the conspiracy theory is not an essential part of the story; had President Nixon admitted to his part in the affair the official theory would still have been newsworthy.

[I do deal with Clarke’s notion of conspiracy theories as being examples of degenerating research programmes, but much later in the thesis.]

Karl Popper, in addition to his analysis of the conspiracy theory of society presents what I take to be a related worry, which is that the conspiracy theory of society entails the belief that we are being kept ignorant of what is happening behind the scenes of our political and social reality. He calls this concern the conspiracy theory of ignorance, which:

…interprets ignorance not as a mere lack of knowledge but as the work of some sinister power, the source of impure and evil influences which pervert and poison our minds and instil in us the habit of resistance to knowledge.” Conjectures and Refutations

He argues that the conspiracy theory of ignorance is a modern superstition analogous to belief in a deity/omnipotent and omniscient agent.

The conspiracy theory of society is just a version of this theism, of a belief in gods whose whims and wills rule everything. It comes from abandoning God and then asking: `Who is in his place?’ His place is filled by various powerful men and groups–sinister pressure groups, who are blamed for having planned the great depression and all the evils from which we suffer. Conjectures and Refutations

Such a belief, Popper argues, is held by a great many rationalists; he points toward Adolf Hitler as a rationalist who replaced a belief in a god that brought about Germany’s troubles with a belief in a Conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to destroy the German people and their way of life ((Popper is quite damning in his condemnation of the beliefs of rationalists; I do wonder whether the Rationals and Humanists, who love Popper, have every actually read Conjectures and Refutations.)).

Popper’s conspiracy theory of ignorance is about the consequences of belief in the conspiracy theory of society and whilst this is not strictly within the domain of this thesis, given that it seems more properly suited to a thesis in Psychology, I will touch upon this kind of issue from time to time ((Except I never did, which is why this section has been excised from the final draft of my dissertation.)).

[I wrote a post about the conspiracy theory of ignorance in 2009; you can read it here.]

Frank of Swifthack has asked me for a brief summary of my lost Wikileaks article. Given that my near three thousand words of material on Wikileaks, Julian Assange and an incident with a Christmas Pudding was lost in the database crash of last December, here is the very (very) short version (lecture notes, if you will) of that post.

1. Julian Assange can be both a rapist and a protector of our civil liberties/a virtuous quasher of secrets; there’s nothing inherently contradictory about being someone who is good in one area and bad in another. As a good friend of mine noted on Facebook, if history has taught us anything, it’s that people are complex and nuanced.

2. With respect to point one, Assange should go back to Sweden and allow the law to take its course. It is very unlikely that these charges are political in nature (that requires, at the very least, believing in a grand conspiracy where the Swedish judiciary is in the control of the CIA) and it’s unfortunately quite likely that he’ll be investigated and go free ((I say “unfortunately” here not because I think he’s guilty but because, even in the utopic social democracy of Sweden, it is hard to secure prosecutions against rapists.)).

Also, Assange should shut up about how this is a plot by crazed feminists to get him. His lawyers should shut up about this being a honeytrap by shadowy powers.

3. With respect to the contents of the leak itself, we must remember that these leaks are the interpretation of data by diplomats rather than the raw data itself; not everything mentioned in the cables will be true and a lot of it will have been spun by countless individuals in a chain of PR, bluff and bluster well before it got to the point of being written down.

Sometimes we are told exactly what we want to hear.

4. Still, some of that data is interesting. The USA isn’t interfering in South American politics to the extent that Chavez would have us believe. America does know how many civilians are being killed in their foreign wars, despite claims to the contrary.

5. Still no smoking gun about the Inside Job Hypothesis. No worries though; Assange is actually a CIA plant, don’t you know?

6. There is a lot of talk going on about whether it is reasonable for governments to keep secrets from the people. Some have (I think rightly) pointed out that we, as citizens, owe our governments nothing because governments serve us; if the people we elect to be in charge want to deal in secret, then they are going to need very good reasons to do so.

The question is, is there a case for secrecy? In the missing post I spent quite some time arguing back and forth as to what would constitute good reasons and whether these good reasons actually stand up to scrutiny. A lot of the material basically boiled down to trust; if you trust your government you are more likely to think that they are dealing both in good faith and acting on some set of broad principles that will determine the tenor of whatever is going on behind closed doors. If you do not trust your government, then anything that goes on in secret is immediately suspect.

Whether secrecy is a requirement for certain inter-state activities, such as negotiating treaties, et cetera, is a subject on which I have no hard-and-fast view; I suspect secrecy isn’t necessary for successful diplomacy but because everyone is doing it no one wants to challenge the status quo.

7. Redacted.

So, there you go. The hazy memories of a post long gone, in note form.

Trah.