Who’s Afraid of Conspiracy Theory?
One contender for the most successful psychological operation of all time is the effective erasure of the word “conspiracy” from the English language.
George Orwell outlined the basic programme for this lexicon malarky in his afterword to 1984, The Principles of Newspeak. The idea is that if you can control the language people use, then you can control their very thought processes. The aim is to make it so that “a heretical thought …. should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”
This would be done “chiefly by eliminating undesirable words”. Unfortunately for the propagandist, language is by definition collective. Therefore, you can’t simply unilaterally banish a word. But if you have a large measure of control over the media, you can work on a word in order to “delegitimise” it. Mock it, sneer, laugh, and do so relentlessly …. And sooner or later everyone joins in and the word, though still in circulation, no longer provokes “serious” discussion. The requisite endlessly repeated pantomime is wonderfully summarised by the inimitable Gore Vidal:
TV-watchers have no doubt noted so often that they are no longer aware of how often the interchangeable TV hosts handle anyone who tries to explain why something happened. “Are you suggesting that there was a conspiracy?” A twinkle starts in a pair of bright contact lenses. No matter what the answer, there is a wriggling of the body, followed by a tiny snort and a significant glance into the camera to show that the guest has just been delivered to the studio by flying saucer. This is one way for the public never to understand what actual conspirators—whether in the F.B.I. or on the Supreme Court or toiling for Big Tobacco—are up to. It is also a sure way of keeping information from the public. The function, alas, of Corporate Media.
(‘The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh’, Vanity Fair 2001.)
Thus, the C word was cast into the fiery pit. However, the eternal fountain of human inquisitiveness proves to be a constant nuisance especially when you can’t stop the punters from realising that something funny is going on, 9/11 being a most excellent example of a “Big Story” riddled with pretty obviously implausible claims.
And this is where the really brilliant bit comes in. Have the conspiracy speculations run rampant but only permit them on “The Right”, “The Left” being far too (ahem!) smart to fall for any of that silly stuff.
It’s a magnificently effective bit of juggling. The Right can shake off the Orwellian fog as much as they want. Indeed, the more penetrating they become, the more scathing the Left’s response.
And to seal that scathing denunciation, the rejection of conspiracy was incorporated into what now passes for “Marxism”. That strain of thought usually referred to as “historical materialism” or, to be more precise, its rebirth under the Western cinema billboard, utterly forbad conspiracy.
There is, to be sure, a vague logic to this in that Marx’s critique of capitalism was meant to be systemic i.e. exploitation was no longer required to be administered through direct political control from above – as in the dear old feudal days – but was now built into the very foundations of the economic system from below, so to speak.
However, no matter how watertight the application of capitalist ideology, in real life actual circumstances, there are conspiracies galore. The minions slaving away in any line of factory or office or care work are not exactly consulted for input regarding management manoeuvres. The various bosses are always working, as it were, “behind the scenes”. Changes in tack, redundancies, expansions, mergers, and all manner of dealings with the government – all these take place via groups meeting in secret.
“Ah but” say our bold Leftists, “That’s just how capitalism works”. To which the perfect response is, “Well that means capitalism works through conspiracies”.
And to retrace our steps a little, isn’t the very ideology of capitalism a matter for constant reinforcement? The “correct line” must always be taken. And errant media underlings who haven’t grasped the nature of the game must be “dealt with” as in “properly educated”. Though to be sure, the entire mantra guarding the system is so well ingrained, that such indecorous deviants are unlikely to arise. …. But still ….
And whilst we’re waxing Marxist, how about that famous “division of labour”? The very process of industrial production with its assembly lines and demarcations of activity that is split up between various “worker drones” here and there is a most tempting invitation for systemic secrecy. Every line of this industry practically presents itself as one of those David Ickean “Masonic” pyramids where the lower down you go, the less knowledge there is.
In short, not only is there no contradiction between the critique of capitalism and conspiracy theory. But the former must necessarily involve the latter.
But of course, none of this can be admitted. The Left scorn conspiracy theory. They have evolved many techniques for the scorning. One such is claim that every conspiracy theory implies some kind of infallible omnipresent in-group operating across centuries if not millennia. Yes, the old straw man is a favourite.
A more devastating technique owes its power to its subtlety. And that is the seemingly irresistible pull of Marxist verbiage towards great overarching abstractions. They’re wonderful for analysing the huge tectonic plates of economic and political shudderings but the moment you refer to specific people making specific plans in specific situations, the accusatory C word comes out. You might say that this brand of Marxism has been etherealised. The haughty sky-high pronouncements ring from the mountain summit …. But any reference to the actual activity on the ground is “conspiracy poo”.
And indeed, “conspiracy poo” was a term used by one of those jolly clever Marxian chaps – the one I previously referred to as sneering at “Janet and John stories”. Indeed, there is the clue. He waffled on and on in his usual scintillatingly polysyllabic way and then delivered the bon mot: “the rest is conspiracy poo”.
And there it is: “Conspiracy” – the magic sound that makes it all …. go away. And aren’t the very names Janet and John indicative of real people? Can’t have that!
The upshot is a movement that can wax wondrously on the general processes by which capitalism operates, the contradictions that arise, the effects on individual and mass psychology and so on. And yet the moment a theory starts to drift towards anything specific, these great minds perform an intellectual body swerve, denounce “conspiratorial thinking” and divert attention back to that grand view from a distance which even dismisses specific instances as “irrelevant”.
This sad dodge received its ultimate expression when Noam Chomsky went so far as claiming that even if 9/11 truly was an inside job it wouldn’t matter anyway. And such is Chomsky’s grip on some minds that one of them even opined, “Of course! He’s absolutely right!” There could be no more damning proof of the efficacy of such psychological operations.
But the good news is that even the Left are starting to feel the vibrations of that uncouth intrusion from the plebian realm that so vulgarly insists on something funny going on. This Left have even had to admit that the banished C word deserves a small acknowledgment. But of course, the old defensiveness is still operative. See here:
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-arabs-hate-us-because-of-our
This is Caitlin Johnstone. You couldn’t get a better representative of Proper Leftist Thinking.
What have we here?
One of the reasons socialists don’t focus on conspiracy analysis and the deep state as much as the right is because it’s not our only argument. It’s not that conspiracies and parapolitical power structures don’t exist, they absolutely do, but because we’re not ideologically compelled to make excuses for the unavoidable abuses of capitalism we don’t need to act like any specific cabal of machiavellian elites is the source and summit of all our problems.
I have a familiar tingle. Disingenuousness alert! Caitlin admits there are, after all, real conspiracies but since the conspiratorial angle isn’t the Left’s only argument, she doesn’t consider it at all!
And hark at that “unavoidable abuses of capitalism”. Is she suggesting that capitalism itself is being abused? Is she suggesting that there is a “proper” way to exercise capitalism? Is she drifting towards capitalist apology?
It may just be bad wording. It may be that she is saying that capitalism always leads to abuse. But what are these abuses? Can she name even one that didn’t involve participants working in secret?
And as for “we don’t need to act like any specific cabal of machiavellian elites is the source and summit of all our problems” – well it’s back to that old straw man song. We aren’t talking about all our problems. But – and this is a biggie! – there is always some specific cabal of machiavellian elites operating at any one time. They may not always be the same people. But they are always specific people.
The rightist suffers from the delusion that capitalism would be working perfectly fine if a few nefarious individuals weren’t scheming behind the scenes ruining the capitalism for everyone.
I don’t have a problem with this. This is indeed a typical capitalist apology.
The leftist recognizes that corruption, corporatism, inequality and domination are the inevitable products of a profit-driven system under which the capitalist class are able to exploit the working class who have nothing to sell but their labor.
OK – so far so good.
We therefore often find it less important to focus on the specifics of the way those abuses are playing out, because we understand that even if you eliminated all the current oligarchs and their secret plans and the strings they pull to manipulate the official government, if you didn’t also replace our entire system with something radically different they’d be replaced by new oligarchic manipulators in short order.
Well exactly! Oligarchs making specific plans are the very stuff of capitalism. Capitalism grants the means by which those oligarchs operate. Does this mean you don’t pay attention to how those oligarchs operate in a specific situation? And every situation is a specific situation.
And then this:
For those who understand the inherently exploitative, ecocidal, unjust and violent nature of capitalism, the strongest arguments against status quo power structures are not invisible conspiracies happening in secret, but the monstrous abuses that are happening right out in the open.
This is very familiar indeed. George Monbiot made exactly the same noise after 9/11. “Don’t speculate on hidden plans! Look at what is in clear view!” To which we are perfectly entitled to ask, “What? Even when the existence of a hidden plan is obvious because the official account is so absurd?”
And that is really the bottom line. Like Monbiot, Caitlin is saying, “Look – don’t speculate independently! Don’t go outside the media frame! Watch the movie!”
And it soon becomes clear that Caitlin is all about containment. And at this point let’s introduce a term that comes as a major thorn in the flesh to some of our Marxist scholars: Litmus test. Well, it’s such a vulgar expression. So reductive. So demeaning. Well, pardon the French, but Fuck that! There are litmus tests, the failure to pass which signals a major credibility problem.
There are many such but let’s keep it simple and relevant: covid. I really don’t care about being accused of being belligerent or divisive. By this time – five years into “The Covid Age” – if there are those who haven’t wised up to the utter fraud of covid then I no longer see why I should waste any further time on them.
Now to my knowledge, our Caitlin has never breathed a word of scepticism about covid. She also continues to stand by the entire ludicrous trans theology going by a recent comment sneering at “the trans agenda” presented as a bogey man for – who else? – “Rightists”.
And quite frankly these simple observations of where Caitlin won’t go are enough to completely sink her for those much wiser than myself who never paid any attention to this Leftist phobia about conspiracies.
And this may be the bit that is painful for me to admit to. Caitlin like the rest of the mainstream Leftists have either shilled for or ignored the entire covid/vax narrative. And a vast number of the population, unencumbered by the non sequitur stitching together of Marx and conspiracy phobia, would simply abandon Caitlin. Indeed, for them, this mainstream Left don’t even register. The 2020 covid coup signalled a devastating peak for the power that the media could demonstrate. But in – dare I say it? – true dialectic fashion, the peak of power signals the setting in of a final weakness. The phony dissidence of the mainstream Left is now more glaringly obvious than it’s ever been before.
And this sorry faction has become so irrelevant that more and more are becoming less and less aware of them. This faction no longer matters at all.
Addendum
Whilst searching for a suitable picture to top this article, I found drearily predictable cases of “conspiracy management”. Here’s one title which, interestingly, inverts my own:
Who’s immune to conspiracy theories?
Isn’t it amazing how much you can tell from a title? Take the word “immune”. It suggests that “conspiracy theory” is some kind of illness that you can catch.
This link came from the University of Rochester, subtitle: “University Marketing and Communications”. Once again (and again and again) note how the general conspiracy phobia is shared by mainstream organisations and our bold independent Leftists!
