Reprinted from the July-September, 2005 BASIS

By Michael Barkun, Ph.D.
University of California Press
Berkeley, CA 2003

What becomes strikingly clear when reading A Culture of Conspiracy is that there is a sizeable number of people in this country who actually believe that our economy and political future are being controlled by hidden cabals that manipulate the forces of our society for their own hidden reasons. Michael Barkun does a commendable job of explaining the evolution of these disturbing beliefs and their permutations.

The author divides conspiracy theories into three categories, in ascending order of dangerousness. The first are event conspiracies. Event conspiracies are conspiracies that resulted in a specific event. The theories around the Kennedy assassination are examples of event conspiracies. With an event conspiracy, conspirators focused all of their attention on a single, specific, unambiguous act. The conspirators are unquestionably evil but their focus is limited and so probably is the size of the group carrying out the event. With Systematic conspiracies, the conspirators have broader goals, such as taking control of a state, region or country. The goal is lofty but the network is still relatively simple. An evil group of people infiltrates, subverts, and plans to take over existing institutions. Event conspiracy believers often, for example, go to great length to blame Jews or Masons or the Catholic Church for having malevolent designs on national and international institutions.

The third type of conspiracy is the superconspiracy, where multiple groups of conspiracists get together so that there are conspiracy groups hidden within conspiracy groups hidden within conspiracy groups. At the very top of this pyramid is a small, distant and vile group controlling all of the strings.

Conspiracy believers insist that their beliefs are based on empirical evidence. The evidence they rely on, though, is subjective at best and they oversimplify complex world events and twist ambiguous information to fit their theory. Although they maintain that there is proof for their claims, the claims themselves are not falsifiable. The general way they justify their paucity of proof is by insisting that the conspiracy leaders they’re trying to expose control the way information is gathered and disseminated. Since the evil conspiracy group controls the media, universities and governments, the absolute proof that the believers know is out there is being kept from them by the very group they’re trying to uncover. It’s a closed system. Basically, they’re saying “the evil group is out to get us but because they’re so powerful, they won’t allow us to have the evidence we need to prove that they’re trying to get us. However, we know they’re out to get us and the fact that they won’t allow us the evidence is just that much more evidence.”

The result of this is that conspiracy theories are not based on substantive evidence and the very little information, suspect though it is, that they present for their claims is information they maintain inadvertently got away from the conspirators. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and what are claimed to be excerpts from classified government documents related to UFOs are examples of this sort of information. Another way believers justify their beliefs is to say that since all traditional institutions are controlled by the conspiracy, they’re not obligated in any way to consider as factual any information from governments, media or universities. According to believers, such information is really just disinformation put out by the conspiracy leaders to protect themselves.

An important aspect of Conspiracy theories is something called stigmatized knowledge claims. Stigmatized knowledge claims consist of beliefs that may once have been widely believed but have since been marginalized or rejected by scholars. Dr. Barkun mentions four categories of stigmatized knowledge. The first category is forgotten knowledge. Forgotten knowledge consists of knowledge that believers insist once existed but was lost due, for instance, to a natural catastrophe. Wisdom said to exist on Atlantis is an example of forgotten knowledge. The second category of stigmatized knowledge is superceded knowledge. Belief systems that were once considered the norm but have since been rejected by science are called superceded knowledge. Astrology and alchemy are superceded knowledge beliefs.

Ignored knowledge is the third category of stigmatized knowledge. Ignored knowledge consists of beliefs that still are evident in our culture but are for the most part rejected by most people due to the paucity of evidence supporting their efficacy. Folk medicine and dousing are forms of ignored knowledge. And finally, there is suppressed knowledge. This is knowledge that conspiracy buffs insist is true. It is an important part of the paranoiac framework of the conspiracy subculture. According to conspiracy buffs, suppressed knowledge is known by world powers to be accurate. However, for their own nefarious purposes, these powers are keeping the truth from everybody else. Cures for cancer and mental illness that are suppressed by the medical industry are claimed as being suppressed information. One of the most frequently cited examples of suppressed knowledge is that of UFOs. There is a vast body of literature that insists governmental agencies are hiding information about aliens and UFOs. Not surprisingly, UFOs and aliens figure quite prominently into contemporary conspiracy theories.

An interesting point is made in the book is that when a person accepts one tenet of stigmatized knowledge, it becomes easier for him or her to accept another, and then another. The consequence is that his or her world belief system is a figurative house of cards. Unpopular views and rejected beliefs are then more likely to be accepted by this person precisely because they are stigmatized and at odds with official explanations. In fact, an official explanation that is at odds with the stigmatized knowledge is likely to be seen as an attempt to suppress the real truth.

Dr. Barkun does a commendable job of tracing the origins of popular conspiracy theories. The Illuminati, for example, really existed but it ceased to exist hundreds of years ago, although still very much cited as a modern-day cabal controlling national economic policies. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forgery written and disseminated by Czarist secret police in which the fictional characters in the work planned world domination. Despite its thorough debunking, the Protocols still figure into modern conspiracy theories. As the twentieth century progressed, the Protocols became enmeshed in a superconspiracy, whereby Masons, Jews, international bankers, ancient families and banks were united in their aim to control the world’s destiny. Think about the numbers of popular thrillers with words like “protocol” or “memorandum” in the title, often referring to a powerful cabal uncovered by an accidental revealing of suppressed knowledge.

What is interesting is that the superconspiracy model has found remarkable acceptance today…but it gets trickier. The proliferation of the internet, the sense of powerlessness many people feel over their own destinies, and the lack of scientific acumen of many in our society have led to some pretty outlandish beliefs. Extraterrestrial aliens, lizard-like creatures, are said to be in cahoots with the U.S. government or they are controlling the U.S. government. These aliens live in great caverns in New Mexico or, alternately, deep inside a hollow earth.

Furthermore, theses aliens are connected, in a bizarre way, to the strongly felt millenialist beliefs of so many people in the United States. Bad things are going to happen before the end times. The aliens are demons pretending to be angels, or just possibly, and a true believer has to at least consider this scenario, aliens will assist with the end times rapture by whisking the select good people off a dying planet in space ships. The forces of darkness will be assisted in the end times scenario by agents of a one world government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will impose martial law and transport malcontents to pre-built concentration camps and individuals will lose all freedom of expression.

Reprinted from the April-June, 2005 BASIS

Intelligence has been defined in many ways. It is the ability to use tools. It is the ability to understand the time-line, our ultimate demise being at the very end of our personal time-line. It is the ability to plan or use symbols, such as money, pass on information to the next group of humans, or a parallel group of humans. It is the ability to formulate a society, and even to voluntarily die for it. It is having conscious ambition. It is the ability to cooperate technologically. No doubt the reader can add to this list.

The problem, of course, is that we are a hermit species in the sense that we have found no separate technological society with which we can compare ourselves. Thus, intelligence is self-defined. We are only talking about a bundle of human traits (and justifications).

“Fifi loves me,” the stereotypical society matron might say. An animal behaviorist might say that Fifi knows where dinner comes from and takes the right actions to insure it. We call the Matron’s characterization of Fifi’s affectionate behavior, “anthropomorphism.”

It is an easy step to reverse the dog example to the God example (capitalized because this is a unique creature to monotheists). We “anthropomorphize” God, saying He loves us (if we perform the right rituals and/or hold certain beliefs) and that He will reward us in the end. It is beyond the scope of this publication to speculate on whether this concept of the divine has any merit. But we can certainly talk about people’s concepts of the spiritual and their consequences.

Intelligent design has no scientific meaning since there is no way to measure it. It is merely an anthropomorphic projection of how things began. Science measures processes, not “origins-out-of-nothing.” It has no mechanism to do so. Science is agnostic about supernatural matters.

The more cynical among us point out that the concept of “intelligent design” is merely an excuse to proselytize a particular religious view in public classrooms as a way to skirt around the constitutional ban on government support of any religion, or even the notion of religion. Intelligent design is a religious belief, which science cannot question since it doesn’t deal with belief, but with evidence. If the evidence is compelling, I accept it. I don’t “believe” since compelling evidence to the contrary will change my mind without throwing my “soul” into turmoil.

George Bernard Shaw, in his satirical essay, “Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God” (1932), and Karen Armstrong, in her scholarly but readable, “A History of God,” (1994) both talk about how we think about God. Basically, when rulers had complete and terrible power over us, we thought of God as a righteous despot. Victorian sentimentalism made us think of him more as a father figure. To which I add, as economic determinism (market-centric economic theory) became more codified as a result of our conflict with the Soviet central-planning model, God became, in many people’s minds, an accountant. You had to do certain things, hold certain views, and if the account books favored you at the end of life, you got your reward. This probably horrifies thoughtful religious people, but it stuck since it is easy to understand and requires no agonizing self-examination. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and other early theological thinkers would think of “accounting” view as rank heresy..

The new phenomena among many Christian fundamentalists appears to be that God has all three traits. While this doesn’t represent the view of the majority of American Christians, fundamentalists tend to vote their religious notions, while other Christians vote on such non-essentials as war, the economy, social welfare, and personal rights, pretty much like the rest of us. That gives them powers well beyond their numbers. They can tilt an election. If the leader of the country happens to be perceived as one of them, he takes on the attributes of God’s representative on Earth (like the pope does for most Roman Catholics).

As Alan Watts (1915-1973), who wrote about Eastern religions, once said in a radio interview, “Americans can’t decide whether this is a democracy, or a theocracy.” The “democracy” part is that if they tilt the election and their guy wins, their agenda must be followed. But if you follow that agenda, it leads to theocracy. Of necessity, theocracy favors one interpretation of religious “truth” over all others, and places in power men who claim a direct line to heaven, and insure that claim using the police powers of the state.

Although intelligent design is a joke on its face, having no scientific merit, it has powerful political proponents. Teachers have been fired for holding a strictly scientific viewpoint (or at least, don’t have their contracts renewed). Public moneys can be wasted. Young minds can be corrupted and alienated from proper intellectual pursuits.

My problem with religious people is not so much that they want to express themselves and proselytize to us. In fact, that’s what most of them want. But when they do it without using public money or legal authority, I can choose to say no. I don’t have to even listen if I don’t want to. But a sizable minority of fundamentalists (22% of Americans are “value voters” according to the respected Pew polling organization) are willing to lie (teaching the Bible as “literature” for instance), cheat (calling a theological construct, “intelligent design,” “science”) and steal (using public money when it is clearly contrary to the US Constitution).

Reprinted from the July-September, 2005 BASIS

The National Insecurity Council
EarthWorks Press
Berkeley, California 1992

It’s a Conspiracy is a fun read and actually quite informative in a silly, whimsical way. The book, the authors of which are listed as The National Insecurity Council, is divided into clearly distinct chapters, each of which is devoted to a specific conspiracy or a group of conspiracies sharing a common theme. The authors then describe the evidence of the event as it is known and the competing conspiracies that endeavor to explain what really happened. For example, the sub listings under the chapter “The JFK Assassination” are “Who Was Oswald?” “The Magic Bullet,” “The Warren Commission,” “Oswald’s Gun”,” “Jack Ruby,” and “Who Killed Kennedy?” In the chapter on Kennedy, the reader gets a myriad of competing theories and the substantiation, if one wants to generously call it that, which claims to support each conspiracy theory.

In the chapter “Suspicious Deaths,” are listed William Sullivan, Warren G. Harding, Jim Morrison, Robert Maxwell and Vicki Morgan. As with the chapter of JFK, the known facts are presented and then the conspiracy theory and its explanation of what the facts really mean are explained. The chapter “Comic Relief” is good fun. It’s totally devoted to the theory that Elvis is still alive. “War Stories” is also notable because among its many subheadings are included conspiracy theories on Pearl Harbor, The Tonkin Incident and all sorts of odious goings on in Nicaragua.