Conspiracy everywhere

CONSPIRACY RISING

Chapter 1

I Want to Believe

The Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, transformed American politics; they changed the federal government’s domestic and international policy agendas, individual citizens’ sense of identity and security, and even the nation’s conception of itself and its place in the world. The Global Language Monitor, an organization that analyzes and tracks language usage, notes that 9/11 also changed American political discourse. New words and phrases, such as “Ground Zero,” entered the lexicon. Notably, too, the tone of political discussion became increasingly vitriolic. Opponents were openly called liars and even compared to Fascists. The Monitor comments that it is as if, “in the face of a nearly invisible, constantly morphing, enemy, we have turned the attack inward, upon ourselves, and our institutions.” As Americans and the world came to terms with the events of September 11, a significant minority questioned the government’s account of that day. Among the alternative explanations that appeared was the assertion that it was in fact the U.S. government itself that had initiated an attack on its own citizens. In a 2006 Scripps Howard poll, 36 percent of those surveyed stated that they believed the American government participated in the attacks or knew about them, and did nothing to stop their occurrence. In a radio interview, actor Martin Sheen commented, “Up until last year, I was very dubious . . . I did not want to believe that my government could possibly be involved in such a thing, I could not live in a country that I thought could do that—that would be the ultimate betrayal. However, there have been so many revelations that now I have my doubts.” How and why could citizens of a democratic state believe that their own government would murder or allow others to destroy them?

This book argues that the roots of these kinds of beliefs lie much deeper than 2001. Americans’ mistrust of government goes back to the nation’s founding. The United States is, after all, a country founded in a revolution against government excess. Conspiracy thinking itself also has deep roots within the U.S. body politic. New, however, is the extent to which American public discourse is now permeated by the language of conspiracy.

Conspiracy theories, present on the fringe of American politics since the nation’s founding, became an accepted part of popular discourse in the late 20th century. While once theseviews might have been considered the harmless and eccentric beliefs of a few, now they are neither. Paradoxically, they foster both political apathy and its opposite, political extremism, and significant numbers of people believe they provide reasonable explanations for economic, social, and political events. Talk of conspiracy is everywhere, from Tea Party assertions about Obama’s birthplace to accusations regarding George W. Bush’s political agenda and concern that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has established secret concentration camps to imprison American citizens. The history of this way of thinking about politics has much to tell us about our current political environment and its cleavages. This book is therefore not an effort to assess the truth of any of these conspiracies. Instead, it reflects upon the history of conspiracy theory as the history of a particular way of thinking about the world. It also examines why conspiracy theory has become more prominent within the United States in recent years.

Conspiracy Thinking

The word “conspire” literally means “to breathe together,” and its connotation—men and women invisibly but intimately connected—fi ts the word’s usage across the centuries. Historically, the term referred to individuals coming together to engage in a “criminal, illegal, or reprehensible” plot.  Its usage, however, changed slightly but definitively in the 20th century. Rather than focusing on a small band of conspirators, the term instead came to refer most commonly to the belief that some covert agency “political in motivation and oppressive in intent” was directing world affairs. Today, the word “conspiracy” most likely conjures up in our imagination the image of a small cabal of individuals that somehow controls the political and economic world, and might also manipulate every aspect of our lives. While these two types of conspiracy thinking are related, one of the arguments of this book is that the distinction between them is meaningful, and that the growing importance of superconspiracies is particularly significant.

Today, conspiracy theories concerning single events still exist, and single events are often the subject of a multiplicity of such theories. Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, for example, fostered the development of many theories that contradict the official autopsy results, and subsequent investigations by the authorities. Many of them name Robert Kennedy as the central figure responsible for her death. Each of those theories identifies different figures (Marilyn’s psychiatrist, the Secret Service, the FBI, and even the Communists) as carrying out his plans. Other theories suggest that J. Edgar Hoover ordered her murder. Still others claim she was killed by the Mafia working with the Kennedy family, aiming to hurt the Kennedys or aiming to help the Kennedys.

An entire body of literature exists, for example, that suggests that Marilyn was murdered because the Kennedy brothers had told her the real truth about UFOs and Roswell. One such theorist writes, “If Monroe was indeed aware of President Kenndy’s [sic] secret visit to see downed alien life and technology, and was about to blow the whistle, then she was a security threat. She directly jeopardized the Kennedy brothers [sic] efforts to restore direct Presidential oversight of extraterrestrial related issues. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

In contrast, “superconspiracies” identify a single malevolent force at work behind a network of organizations attempting to consolidate control of all meaningful political and economic activity.Typically, they identify the shadowy masterminds behind these plans as mysterious groups such as the Knights Templar, Freemasons, or the Illuminati. Every superconspiracy identifi es its own combination of conspirators; a small sample of the most popular of these includes specific individuals in the American government, Saudi oil interests, Jews, lizards in the center of the earth, extraterrestrial spirits invading human bodies, Osama bin Laden’s Masonic connections, and a business lobby of “Freemasons loyal to the Zionists.”

Superconspiracies have a life in mainstream political discourse that is both curious and profoundly troubling. A belief that individuals conspired to cause a single event may indicate a lack of information or perhaps a moderate and healthy skepticism, but belief in a superconspiracy suggests that perhaps the individual concerned has lost his sense of personal and political efficacy.

These two forms of conspiracy belief are not, however, clearly distinct. Groh suggests that modes of historical explanation exist on a spectrum, with conspiracy at one end and science at the other. It is possible, he argues, that the degree to which individuals resort to conspiracy to explain the world also exists on a spectrum. Some individuals might use it in a very limited way, while others might use it to explain quite simply everything, a view that implies that there are some conspiracy beliefs that are not as harmful as others. In 1997, for example, Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a terrible Paris car crash, along with her boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed; the official French inquiry found that the driver of their car had consumed a significant amount of alcohol and was driving above the speed limit, and that his passengers were not wearing seat belts. A number of individuals, including Mohamed Al-Fayed, Dodi’s grieving father, claimed that “the British Establishment” wanted Diana and Dodi dead. He complained that the inquests were incomplete and inaccurate: “The jury have found that it wasn’t just the paparazzi who caused the crash, but unidentified following vehicles. Who they are and what they were doing in Paris is still a mystery.”

Conspiracy theorists have pounced upon Al-Fayed’s observations.

A limited conspiratorial interpretation of these events might be that Diana had “finally had enough of the Windsors” and was assassinated before she could reveal their darkest secrets. A more extreme and problematic conspiratorial view is that “the death of Diana was engineered by the satanic thirteen interrelated family bloodlines collectively known as the Illuminati and that the thirteenth pillar [of the tunnel] was deliberately selected as the point of impact.”

This is a significantly expanded conspiracy theory that involves the British and French Secret Services, by implication the British and French governments, as well as the Illuminati and the Freemasons, secret organizations that in this view are capable of orchestrating the broad sweep of world history, down to its finest details. Here, the first type of conspiracy thinking suggests a kind of extreme suspicion of the British monarchy, and in the case of Mohamed Al-Fayed, a father’s grief. The second type evidences faith in unseen forces of history that can somehow control the details of everyday existence, down to which pillar a speeding car hits in a Paris tunnel. It implies a particularly pathological way of understanding history and politics.

Barkun contends that while more limited conspiracy beliefs may seem harmless, there is no safe conspiracy theory because contemporary conspiracy theories evidence a “dynamic of expansion.” Accepting one such theory inclines one to accept another. This process means that one moves from the explanation of one event to eventually arrive at a “superconspiracy,” the view that a single, all-powerful, evil force is directing numerous conspiracies that are hierarchically linked together and directed.

These arguments are supported by surveys of conspiracy believers. In 1994, Ted Goertzel found that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are likely to believe in others, and that those theories do not have to be thematically or logically related. Goertzel’s survey questioned respondents regarding theories as diverse as: “the American government deliberately put drugs into the inner city communities”; “the Japanese are deliberately conspiring to destroy the American economy”; and “Ronald Reagan and George Bush conspired with the Iranians so that the American hostages would not be released until after the 1980 elections.”

His findings are supported by two more recent studies. A 1999 study of university students found that those who had adopted specific conspiratorial theories did not just believe in one conspiracy; they believed in an average of 5.7 conspiracies.These conspiracies were unrelated, and extremely diverse, including arguments that the United Nations is taking over the United States, that the American government has engaged in cover-ups of alien landings, that water fluoridation is a conspiracy, and that a cabal of Jews has taken control of the banking system. A more recent British study made a similar finding. Following September 11, 2001, researchers found that one of the principal traits of those who believed the events of that day were the work of conspirators was belief in other conspiracy theories. That is, “believing that John F. Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman, or that the Apollo moon landings were staged, increases the chances that an individual will believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories.” The authors of both studies point out that conspiracy theories provide easily accessible explanations for events that might threaten an individual’s belief system.

For Barkun, these types of links are problematic. He argues that as conspiracy beliefs expand, so does believers’ perception of the domain of evil. The number of conspiracy participants and their powers increase. An apparently benign belief can be one step toward the acceptance of a more malevolent conspiracy theory. Indeed, Barkun points out that many members of the UFO subculture have come to believe that the explanations for history and politics provided in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true. At gatherings of the militia movement, for example, the Protocols are openly supported.

The document known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zionis a prominent anti-Semitic conspiracy document, and for that reason, it is worth considering briefly here. Written by Russia’s czarist secret police sometime before World War I, it is perhaps the world’s most famous forgery. The Protocols allegedly documents a secret meeting of Jewish leaders who are planning to take over the world and institute totalitarian control over every aspect of human existence. Despite the fact that the document is a complete fabrication, it was published across Europe and Asia as a true account. In the United States, Henry Ford sponsored its publication, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. As Barkun suggests, a most notable feature of the Protocolsis its adaptability and malleability; from its fi rst appearance onward, it has morphed into a variety of forms (linking various combinations of secret societies to the Jews’ supposed nefarious schemes). In 2002, for example, Egyptian television aired a 41-part television series that dramatized the forged document. Every episodebegan with the same introduction:

Two thousand years ago the Jewish Rabbis established an international government aiming at maintaining the world under its control and suppressing it under the Talmudic commands, and totally isolating them from all of the people. Then the Jews started to incite wars and conflicts, while those countries disclaimed them. They falsely pretended to be persecuted, awaiting their saviour, the Messiah, who will terminate the revenge against the Goyim that their God, Jehovah, started.

In the architecture of superconspiracy theories, theProtocolsprovides a readily accessible link to anti-Semitism.

Believers in superconspiracies are also likely to be more rigid in their beliefs than those who adopt only single-event conspiracy theories. The scope of a superconspiracy means that the final conflict believers envision can only be concluded with an “Armageddon-like” battle. In addition, they are less likely to give up their beliefs. Their belief system is not just one of many that compete in the marketplace of ideas, but the expression of absolute truth. The internal construction of all conspiracy theories is hyperrational and effectively impossible to disprove. This is particularly true of superconspiracies that purport to explain everything. All actors and events are active in the conspiracy; events that appear not to fit its pattern actually do, but in hidden ways.

As Barkun points out, accepting a conspiracy is ultimately not a judgment based on proof, it is a leap of faith. When they are considered in this way, conspiracy theories resemble religious doctrines. They identify a hidden power that is moving history toward its conclusion, and ultimately they rely on believers’ faith their conviction rather than scientific evidence. In the words of Matthew Gray, conspiracism is therefore  “ the act of developing and sustaining a discourse, usually a counter- discourse, that challenges conventional or accepted explanations for events, and that uses weak, flawed, or fallacious logic, seeks to convince through rhetoric and repetition rather than analytical rigor and most often aims to develop a theory that is broad, even universal in scope.”

Barkun argues that all conspiracy theories share three characteristics. They assert: (1) that the world is governed by design and purpose, and therefore there is no accident or coincidence; (2) that “nothing is as it seems,” and therefore appearances cannot be trusted; and (3) that “everything is connected,” and therefore even those entities that may on the surface appear to be diametrically opposed in ideology or political goals are working in concert.

In other words, the architecture of conspiracy belief systems reassures believers that their lives are meaningful and that they exist in a meaningful universe. All conspiracy theories suggest that real power is exercised in hidden ways, and that even those who appear to wield significant political and economic influence the president of the United States, or the Al-Fayed family, for example may be its victims. Likewise, conspiracy theories identify unusual and hidden alliances among political actors. Prior to the end of the Cold War, for instance, the American Liberty Lobby suggested that Communists and international bankers were in league to transform the world’s governments to Communist dictatorships; adherents argued that Communism, while purporting to elevate the masses, in fact served the interest of international financiers.

Adapting their message for the times, the group’s publications now argue that the bankers are in league with the American government to cover up the extent of Alaska’s oil reserves: “The United States has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia but this happy though shocking information has been covered up for years. The wells have been drilled, it’s merely a matter of turning on the faucets to supply America’s needs for 200 years.”

Another example of the startling connections sometimes made within conspiracy theories can be found in Dr. Boyd Graves’s contention that at the height of the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists cooperated to create the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to use against “undesirable” populations. Related to this, Graves also argues that the American government discovered the cure for AIDS in 1997 (patent number 5676977) but has not allowed it to be manufactured and released because as yet, an insuffi cient number of people have died.

For believers, counterintuitive alliances such as exist in Graves’s theories provide evidence of the hidden nature of power. The conspirators are clever and able to pursue world domination in innovative ways, utilizing for example a ruse as complex as the Cold War to mask their plans. For nonbelievers, however, these alliances may seem extremely unlikely. Would Western business elites really cooperate with Communists in order to create dictatorships?  Would the American government conceal oil wealth from its own population?  Would the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate to create a deadly virus and delay releasing its cure? For conspiracists, the answer to these questions is always yes. In the view of the late Mae Brussell, for example, John Lennon’s assassination was a complex conspiracy:

His death was a well-constructed plot that involved careful manipulation of Mark David Chapman through hypnosis and mind control, starting with antiBeatles propaganda when he became a Fundamentalist Christian. The church sucked him in, then the CIA took over. During Chapman’s travels to London, Hawaii, Israel, Hong Kong and Korea, he was in the specific cities where the people identified with the Kennedy assassination all have bases. Why Lennon? The Reagan administration intends to make war on various soils, and John Lennon’s energy was the greatest force for peace demonstrations. It was their desire to prevent a repeat of the demonstrations of the ’60s.

Within conspiracy belief systems, power operates in these unusual ways. In so doing, believers argue, it can successfully operate and continue undetected. In their view, if you do not see these connections, it is because you are part of the conspiracy, or because you have been duped.

A multitude of ancient and modern conspiracy theories therefore exists, purporting to explain everything from the death of Elvis to the American invasion of Iraq. This host of theories provides a veritable smorgasbord of explanations for politics and history, and within it, villains, victims, events, and the power that links them can be combined in a wide variety of ways. Believers can select the items they prefer, and link them together in whatever way they choose. The rich panoply of conspiracy theories suggests that it is perhaps the very idea of conspiracy and the structure of the belief system itself that draw so many people to this way of thinking.

A worldview wherein the personification of evil exists, working covertly, and exercising its power in a systematic way might be frightening to most of us. To others, however, it is reassuring. The world can be a terrifying place.

The evening news is rife with real horrors: terrorist acts, wars, and natural disasters. Random cruelty and injustice may be less threatening if they are understood to be the product of a known, identifiable enemy. Conspiracy theories provide believers with knowledge (and therefore a degree of control), an enemy against which to fight, and a purpose that is linked to a grand historical narrative. As Jeffrey Bale comments, conspiracy theories  explain why “bad things are happening to good people,” and in so doing, they reaffi rm a believer’s potential to exert control over the future.

While this aspect of conspiracy belief is part of its appeal, it also suggests a most important fl aw in this way of thinking. While it is certainly true that elites and individuals can have an impact on politics and history, it is far from clear that they can know and direct the very course of world events. The historian Dieter Groh writes, “Men make their history themselves, but that which results as history is not theirhistory in the sense that it is what they intended.” Because human beings exist in situations that are either standardized, nor under our control, we cannot develop rules of action from them that would allow us to—literally—make the future.

Every human action can have both intended and unintended consequences. From the perspective of politics, the assumption that history can be controlled is also problematic. Hannah Arendt writes that the fundamental quality of human political life is natality, “the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born.”

With every moment, new possibilities for the world emerge. They are unpredictable, and their implications are unknown: “The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable.” For most historians and political theorists, therefore, conspiracy theories are fundamentally unsound. They presuppose that there exists a reason that is active in history, and that its purpose is knowable.

A second general error in the logic of conspiracy theories is their equation of coincidence with a meaningful plan. It is, for example, apparently possible to fold a $20 bill in such a way as to create a picture of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks ofSeptember 11, 2001, and apparently to fold other bills to show the sequence of events that day. Is this evidence that the government planned the attacks? Some people think so. It is difficult to explain, however, why the government might telegraph a covert plan to commit mass murder and subsequently invade Afghanistan and Iraq on dollar bills. It does not seem like a reasonable action for a government that wished to keep its plans secret from the American people (to say nothing of why any individual might think that currency origami might be the best way to learn about government policy). While true believers might claim “there are no coincidences,”a lack of evidence supporting these arguments makes it difficult for outsiders to believe this is the result of anything but chance.

Similarly, as Gray points out, political acts may be similarly interpreted. In the context of the 2003 Iraq War, for example, then President George Bush’s changing explanations for the invasion appeared curious. Was he covering the tracks of a major conspiratorial plot, or adjusting his story for the sake of political expediency? In the summer of 2010, President Obama found himself the center of controversy when he commented on a proposal to build an Islamic center and mosque near the site of Ground Zero. He later emphasized that he was not expressing support for the proposal but was instead only remarking on the fact that the United States Constitution provided for freedom of religious expression.

Were his comments evidence that he is in fact a Muslim, conspiratorially hiding his religious faith? A poll in August 2010 suggested that despite his history of church attendance, an increasing number of Americans were confused about his religious faith, and close to one in five Americans believe he is a Muslim.

Obama must balance dozens of interests on this question, and as a politician, perhaps a critical point is the importance of midterm elections and his own eventual electoral success. In addition, however, he must also consider the impact of his comments on the families of 9/11 victims, U.S. foreign policy, American Muslims, the Muslim Brotherhood, debates within Islam concerning the political meaning of that faith, and the nature of American international infl uence in the 21st century, to name only a few of the groups and debates upon which his remarks will have a meaningful impact. Politicians frequently adjust their rhetoric and change their explanations as new information and/or public opinion develops. Such situations are the product of a lack of planning or the inability of individuals to control a situation, rather than evidence of a complete control over human history.

David Aaronovitch argues that this tendency of conspiracy theories to assume deliberate agency where chance or accident is more likely the cause should be understood as an inherent aspect of conspiracy thinking. He points out that it is simply more reasonable to believe that in 1969 men actually landed on the moon than to believe that thousands of people engaged in an elaborate plan to construct, maintain, and sustain a conspiratorial deception. In this context, he comments that Occam’s razor reminds us of another way of considering this problem. Aaronovitch translates the famous aphorism Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccisitate, as “Other things being equal, one hypothesis is more plausible if it involves fewer numbers of new assumptions.”  In other words, the simplest explanation is likely the most accurate explanation.