Shane Mage wrote:
>
> Chip Berlet wrote:
> >
> >Conspiracism is not the same as actual conspiracies...It refers to a
> >worldview in which history is seen as driven by
> >conspiracies...Conspiracies
> >happen all the time, but the broad contours of history are not shaped by
> >conspiracies. History is shaped by contention over power...
>
> If by "broad contours of history" one is referring to time spans of millennia
> then there is probably no disagreement and we are all Tolstoians. But
> if we look at history as the concrete events in a span of a few generations
> this is far from obvious. Who can say what the first centuries of the
> Roman Empire would have looked like if no conspiracy to kill Caesar
> had succeeded? (would our eighth month be named "August"?)
I doubt that there would have been much difference: Shakespeare's assassins may have operated out of 'purely' theoretical principles, but the actual ones probably reflected important tendencies within the ruling classes, and the most the assassination could have done was to force a quicker resolution of that conflict.
But there is also another important difference between this conspiracy and the kind that are at the center of what we usually think of as "conspiracy theory": the fact of the "conspiracy" was in the open as it were. So however you interpret its results, it can exemplify a theory of "hidden [conscious] forces" determining history: rather, it exemplifies Chip's proposition: History is shaped by contention over power....
> Would
> a Hitler have arisen if the conspiracy to kill Archduke Frantz-Ferdinand
> had failed?
Perhaps not -- but World War I in some form was going to happen I would suppose. And again, this was _not_ and example of secret forces within the "ruling class" (real or imaginary) pulling the strings behind the scenes; it was an identifiable (and before long identified) particular group. Excitative terror sometimes does indeed excite, but usually if not always in directions not conceived of by the agents. Does anyone claim that the Hapsburgs and the German Czar collaborated on an elaborate plan to kill one of their own in order to start the conflict????
> Would Jim Crow have developed if Lincoln had survived
> the Booth conspiracy?
Almost certainly -- perhaps more quickly. About the only particular episode that I can think of that might have changed that history is some really beautiful plot that established the most radical of the radical republicans as a junta ruling the nation, using an army consisting of freed slaves.
Would American racial politics--indeed American
> politics itself--be what it is today if no conspiracy to kill Martin Luther
> King had succeeded?
I don't know. He wouldn't have changed the structure very much, but possibly the u.s. left would be a bit stronger today, provided he had maintained his political trajectory and really gathered about him major black forces putting anti-war activity as one of their prime concerns. Merely preaching against the war would not have made much difference. And supposing he could have generated such a force (and charismatic leaders usually can't), could he have broken white leftist racism in significant ways, and of course it is not the Farrakhans who are a barrier to white-black unity on the left but the Gitlins etc. Malcolm-X would be a better choice in this argument -- there is more reason to believe that in the case of his murder there might have been at least a finger of CIA or FBI (but _not_ of core ruling class) input.
> What would the fate of Athens have been if the
> conspiracy ("affair of the herms") against Alkibiades had failed? Indeed,
> if the Emperor Julian had survived the conspiracies against him would
> the "broad contours" of our present history have even included such a
> phenomenon as Christianity?
>
> Of course these questions can only be answered in fantasy, and all
> fantasies are at least roughly equal. The point is that in the actual
> course, as distinct from the "broad outlines," of history, conspiracies
> when successful constitute crucial *moments* and historical actors
> ignore them at their peril. This is all too evident after September 11
> last when something awfully like the stench of a burning Reichstag
> is so evident to any normally sensitive nose.
I think my nose is normally sensitive -- and I don't see _any_ of the social conditions that would make such a choice by the ruling class (or major elments within it). And in this case it just won't wash to claim that it was just a special bunch in side the CIA.
What I do see is an already tragically divided left being further splintered by wild-goose chases after ruling class conspiracies when, as I've said before, the everyday open "secrets" of u.s. imperialism and racism are so evident, as they have always been. Our task as unorganized leftists is to keep looking for ways we can get together to be prepared for the next big popular upsurge (from wherever it comes). Fretting about a conspiracy behind 9/11 only interferes with that task.
Carrol
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all
> things."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64