You may well remember an older post detailing my holiday reading; a longer version of it is now up at the ‘Scoop Review of Books.’ Interested parties who wanted more of my thoughts on Mark Fenster’s book will probably want to have a gander to see how I think it panned out.
Category: General
Reminder: CCE – Conspiracy Theories
Just a reminder that my Conspiracy Theories starts really soon. Enrolment options are still open, so enrol enrol enrol.
Dreamers of the Dark
So, the thesis on Kerry Bolton has been vindicated by the processes of the University of Waikato and the peer review system, although some people are crying foul.
As an academic and as someone who knows the peer review system, as well as the social cost of allowing bad research to get by, I have to say that my intuition is that the University will have done its job properly. Certainly, now that the thesis is back in the system I can legitimately look at it and see what the fuss is all about.
Still, conspiracy?
Well, it goes both ways. When I first mentioned the ‘Satanism in New Zealand’ blog all those aeons ago I mentioned that I thought it was a vehicle for doing a hatchet job on Roel van Leeuwen and the thesis he wrote. I still stand by that claim, if only because the blog has become all the more strident in its vehemence towards Roel van Leeuwen and that it seems to be sourcing its criticism directly from Kerry Bolton.
Now the author of the site maintained at the time that the blog was not a hatchet job on Roel van Leeuwen. It’s also quite possible that the author, thinking that there was a fruitful discussion and dissection of Satanist and Black Magick to be hand, found little of note to actually post about, and that the Roel van Leeuwen thesis really was the only game in town. Still… What looks and sounds like a campaign to discredit Roel van Leeuwen may well be a campaign to discredit Roel van Leeuwen.
Yet…
So we know Waikato has had a few issues in the past; the Holocaust thesis, for one. The fact that the report about ‘Dreamers of the Dark’ was sat upon for five months also seems odd (although that might not be true; the report was expected at a particular point in time but knowing academics it might not have been delivered in a timely fashion). There is also the curious fact that if ‘Satanism in New Zealand’ is deliberately a hatchet job website, it doesn’t seem to be a very good one, in that it’s infrequently updated and rather obvious; a true ((We’re getting into the ‘True Scotsman Fallacy’ here.)) conspirator would work much harder to hide the vehemence and make sure the site seemed like it was dealing with other issues as well.
Of course, this might just be incompetence on the part of Roel van Leeuwen detractors. Or it might be that someone really is aghast as to what happened with this thesis. I suppose I’d be more comfortable with this version of the story if Bolton didn’t seem involved with the website, because whether or not Bolton was misrepresented, it would look better for all concerned if he was either a) not given avenue to vent his views there or b) Roel van Leeuwen was given the same opportunity (or had been seen to be given the same opportunity).
This is where studying Conspiracy Theories gets you; I should be charitable and say ‘It’s probably just an interested individual with not much to say.’ I should also be suspicious of inferring conspiratorial motives. Yet, I also know that in circles just like this ad hominems are par for the course ((That really should be the focus of a future post.)).
Anyway, the thesis is back in the domain of accessible academic scholarship and has been subject to an investigation. If I have any spare time between the current chapter and the next I might interloan it and have a gander. In the interim I must go back to writing and finish reading the Aaronvitch book; my preliminary review is that it really is all over the place.
Voodoo Histories [Part 1]
I’m about to start reading David Aaronvitch’s ‘Voodoo Histories – The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.’ It’s getting a lot of critical comment and I thought I might as well have a list of the various reviews to hand so that once I’ve read it I can engage in thoughtful head shaking or nodding as I reread the thoughts of others.
(I will also provide my own review; that’s why this is [Part 1]).
Frank Furedi’s review in the ‘Spiked Review of Books’
Robin Ramsay’s review at ‘Aaronvitch Watch’
There’s bound to be more out there, so let me know.
Actually, before I go, I do want to remark briefly on the Furedi review, because it contains the following paragraphs:
However, real existing conspiracies and officialdom’s occasional fabrication of conspiratorial stories should not be seen the foundation or premise of conspiracy theories. Unlike stories about plots to assassinate Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe, a conspiracy theory is a theory because it doesn’t simply claim to provide explanations for a single event, but for much more than that. Most conspiratorial fantasies do not constitute a theory; a conspiracy theory is something quite different and distinct, and should be recognised as such.
A conspiracy theory provides a view of the world that both explains the background to events and, more importantly, provides a warning for the future. Its focus is not merely on behind-the-scenes machinations and plots against groups and individuals; instead it offers a comprehensive perspective that purports to reveal the real workings of the world we live in. The main theme of the conspiracy theory is the heinous act of moral subversion, allegedly carried out by a cabal of powerful people. In order to shed light on the importance of some global conspiracy, conspiracy theorists use the ideology of evil. This ideology offers a view of the world where unexpected occurrences and acts of misfortune are re-presented as the product of malevolent forces. In providing a comprehensive account of the threats that face a community, this ideology of evil seeks to give meaning to an otherwise incomprehensible world. Historically, the concept of evil has helped to explain why bad things happened; it provided an answer to society’s need to understand the cause of misfortune and it provided guidance on who should bear the blame for such misfortune.
Now, maybe I’m misreading this, but in the first paragraph he denies the role of explanation to Conspiracy Theories and yet in the second paragraph he provides a description as to how they provide an explanatory mechanism for Conspiracy Theorists. Indeed, his entire review is a little like that; he castigates people for mudding the waters about Conspiracy Theories (he especially castigates Mark Fenster) when they divide them up into warranted and unwarranted varieties, rather than sticking the notion of Conspiracy Theories as not just prima facie unwarranted but absolutely unwarranted beliefs.
Which is a pity, because part of his analysis, the focus on the ‘Inference to Conspiracy,’ is fairly close to my thesis, except that I think the Inference to Conspiracy is usually fallacious but not always ((Actually, I suspect Furedi thinks the ‘Inference to Conspiracy’ is sometimes warranted and would say that it is a different inference to the ‘Inference to a Conspiracy Theory.’ I’ll touch on that in the next few months.)).
The Ripple Effect
So, the BBC, in its wisdom, has an episode of ‘The Conspiracy Files’ devoted to the man behind ‘The Ripple Effect.’ I know this because the internet reports on such things, and the BBC, in its promotional glory, has a page telling us about the episode. What is especially great are the comments, for they are of the ‘I’m not a Conspiracy Theorist, but…’ variety.
It is interesting that both the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks occurred at times when the political leader of the nation was suffering in public opinion, and that both these attacks have enabled the governments involved to introduce draconian measures in the name of “security”. Whilst I do not actually believe that the governments were directly involved in either of these attacks (or at least I pray they were not), I am not so sure that they did not consciously ignore critical intelligence and thus allow the events to come to pass.
Bryan Wallbridge, Boston, Lincolnshire
is fried gold (it’s the variation on the so-called ‘Conventry Excuse’ (my terminology)), but the one I like the most is:
Well, I’m not into conspiracy theories but it happens to be completely true that the security services in both New York on 9/11 and London on 7/7 were running mock terrorist attack exercises. Make of that what you will.
Mike, Corby
Which is just fantastic. It’s a little like my ‘favourite’ tactic of a certain class of people who go ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ where what follows after the ‘but’ is almost always racist ((I sometimes like to say at parties something along the lines of ‘I’m not a racist, but I do enjoy watching ‘Lost’.’ It tends to confuse.)). “I’m not a Conspiracy Theorist,” says Mike, “but…”
You’re not fooling anyone.
9/11 Cult watch has reviewed the documentary here. I am endeavouring to obtain a copy for my archives.
Re-introducing the Manifesto
I’ve been mulling over things recently and, due to an online discussion about my past as a Hegelian (I have a thesis to prove it) I was, well not reminded but rather, forced to contemplate old memory banks as they flung themselves into operation; ‘The Manifesto of Self-Revocation’ hoved itself into view.
‘The Manifesto of Self-Revocation’ was a project that several of us worked upon a very, very long time ago. It originally existed as a website ((Which was http://www.neo-catholic.org. I let the domain registration lapse a while back and until recently it was being sat upon by some domain name reseller; the address no longer seems to resolve. Curious, says I.)) and then I, when I should have been doing other work, made it into a book. We had always intended to print copies, but this was before Print-on-Demand was easy and popular. Not that we were expecting a best-seller, or indeed sales; we just wanted to deposit copies of our ‘religious’ text in libraries and in the homes of whanau.
Anyway, it turns out that the PDF is no longer online and that seems, well, a bit disappointing. So here be a link to a page that contains the most recent version of the text of the religion of the pub of the University of Auckland of the country that should be known as Aotearoa/Te Wai Pounamu on the planet dismally called Earth in a solar system other sapient people don’t seem to visit ((Allegedly.)).
The Red Book of the Neo-Catholic Church – The Unexpurgated Version (Contains no Gannets)