in reply to my
>The rise in conspiracy theories is proportionate to the decline in
>political engagement.
>
>&&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: This is not true. In the last period of heavy political engagment, the
>60's/70's , activists took it for granted that the system hatched all kinds of
>criminal conspiracies - COINTELPRO, the prominent assassinations discussed on
>this thread etc. That's part of what I am getting at. This skepticism about the
>widespread existence of corporate/govt. plots is a mark of the rightward trend
>of the left in this period of less political engagement.
>
>Put simply, taken the plotting nature of the establishment for granted is a key
>feature of distrusting the system.
>
>&&&&&&&&&&
I don't think so. There is a difference between the proper scepticism towards the state, which is the reaction of people who value their independence, and paranoia, which is the response of enfeebled people. The kind of people who think that they are being controlled by cosmic rays, or messages beamed by their television screens, or that black helicopters are transporting the troops of the Zionist Occupation Government - these are the kind of people who have actually just lost control over their lives and project that fact, fantastically, onto conspiracies against them.
>
>
>
>The less control we feel over our own lives the
>more willing we are to believe that someone more powerful is pulling the
>strings.
>
>&&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: This is pop psychologizing. The reason to be aware of the major institutions
>of society cheating is as a step toward wanting to change the system. It is an
>important element of being dissatisfied with the status quo.
>
>
>&&&&&&&&&
I wish such psychologising were more popular. The X-Files view of the world does not lead to action, but passivity. And as you yourself have shown, a view of the state as a criminal conspiracy clearly coincides with a legal-reformist outlook.
> Oh they're just a bunch of bumblers.
>No, they are some of the most sophisticated and effective achievers in history.
>You are grossly underestimating the bourgeois enemy and its agents.
>
>&&&&&&&&
Well, as a rule, I avoid any dealings with them. But what I've seen, I have to say that they are pretty low-grade in the intellectual stakes.
>
>
>
>OF course government's do promote all kinds of absurd and vicious
>intrusions into people's lives, but generally on the basis of trying to
>deal with a society they have no idea of how to control.
>
>&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: This defies the obvious. Society is completely under control. The efforts of
>the bourgeoisie to control society are a roaring success right now ( Doug can't
>even imagine a revolution, they have been so successful in this year 2000).
>They didn't stumble into this roaring success , as Justin and Jim would have us
>think. The bourgeois are smarter and more conscious than you give them credit
>for. It is not anonymous, objective, impersonal, mechancial forces that have
>achieved the current neo-liberral triumphalism at home and abroad.
Funny and there was me thinking that the problem with Capitalism was that it was anarchic and un-planned. Plainly Marx got it all wrong when he said that the laws of production operated, so to speak, behind the backs of the producers.
In message <v0422081ab4a55c35215d@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>If you'll notice I tend to think that the Kennedy assassination was
>>mainly motivated by Kennedy's actions internationally ( aside from
>>the lifestyle things).
>
>Do you really think JFK was less an anticommunist than LBJ? You buy
>that whole Oliver Stone line? Seems like a crock to me.
I always admired Alexander Cockburn's assessment of Lee Oswald that, whatever one thought of his methods, his reaction against the imperialist Kennedy was wholly understandable. Incidentally the Chomsky book on Camelot demolishes the Stone thesis. My father sold an anarchist newspaper in Leeds around the time of the assassination with the headline 'So What?'
-- Jim heartfield