Carrol
>From the Marxism List:
David Altman wrote:
>
> BBC News Online: Audio/Video:
> Programmes: Newsnight: Archive
>
> Anthrax attacks 14/3/02
>
> A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a
> secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax
> through the mail which went madly out of control. [CLIP]
>
This offers an occasion for a useful set of distinctions. I do not know whether this actually happened or not, and if it did happen we may or may not ever know it for sure.
_But_ the claim here is a reasonable one, and not to be confused with the sort of claims which are usually included under the label of "conspiracy theory." Various military and other state agencies regularly do engage in such "investigations," and almost always if they "go bad," the agency concerned (whether state or private corporation for that matter) will almost always try to keep it secret. (Iran/Contra is only the best known of various limited "conspiracies" of this sort which regularly occur.) And the 'hope' for secrecy is not irrational, since also such actions do not involve the sort of (fantastically) elaborate planning and the large number of people which (for example) the various conspiracy theories re 9/11 presuppose -- nor is part of their 'appeal' the racist assumptions which lurk below the surface of most conspiracy theories of 9/11.
But note, even in the case of a "reasonable hypothesis" such as this one on the anthrax attacks, the political gain of spending time establishing it is very slight, and probably only detracts from more important agitational tasks. The Iran/Contra connection was established clearly and publicized through establsihment sources. What did it gain us? Nothing! To focus on such matters, I believe, exhibits at bottom a despair as to the potential political capacity of the working class and an undue awe at the might of capital. We have to build our politics on the firm foundation of everyday, in-the-open capitalist society. (Actually, focus on such events as Iran/Contra is more a left-liberal than a revolutionary concern: they illustrate not the fundamental contradictions of capital but rather the liberal assumptions that all would be well if only we could eliminate bad people from the ruling elite.
Conspiratorial theories, even when true, are essentially anti-marxist.
Carrol ---------------
P.S., ref. "racist assumptions" in this post. We had discussed this last September on the marxism list. I had argued that the (more or less hidden)assumption behind all conspiracy theories of 9/11 (or at least the assumption that they appealed to) was that those stupid Arabs were not capable of something sophisticated like the 9/11 attacks. The same sort of racism operated in the Rosenberg case: the assumption (quite overt at the time) was that those stupid Russian peasants could never have built a nuclear device by themselves so they must have stolen it from the bright americans.
Carrol