[lbo-talk] conspiracism, CIA, unions

[Joseph Wanzala]

To the extent that you and Chip Berlet agree or concede that '...this means 
that conspiracies don't
happen, or that they are trivial; only that they aren't the motor of 
history" then we are in agreement. But then, there is no one phenomenon or 
process that is the 'motor or history'. The currents of history are driven 
by a combination of factors, of which 'conspiratorial machinations' are 
one..... no? What Berlet and Co. do is overstate the reliance on so-called 
'conspiratorial' methodoligies and pretend that it is a one track approach 
for people categorized thusly, when in fact such researchers marshall an 
array of methodologies, including good old structural analysis.  What Berlet 
does is to consistently wave his rhetorical wand of 'scapegoating, 
anti-semitic, conspiracy theories' to try to discredit legitimate research.

Whether one is called a conspiracy theorist or not has more to do with what 
questions one asks than any innate characteristics. Take Gary Webb lately of 
the San Jose Mercury News. An award winning mainstream journalist who was 
branded a 'conspiracy theorist' because he strayed off the prescribed path 
and raised questions of 'government involvement' in running drugs. The list 
of people unfairly branded this way is long.

Joe W.


>From: "Mark Rupert" <merupert at maxwell.syr.edu>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] conspiracism, CIA, unions
>Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 12:40:45 -0500
>
>"there was a CIA-orchestrated conspiracy to push
>militant anti-capitalist union activists out of the AFL-CIO"
>
>What you are describing was actually a decades-long process of establishing 
>hegemony within the industrial union movement, and was quite far along 
>before the CIA was even created (for documentation, see my book, Producing 
>Hegemony, Cambridge, 1995). You can't reduce large-scale social processes 
>to conspiracies without missing the big picture and losing sight of the 
>reasons why social change is desirable in the first place (i.e., changing 
>structures of domination). That's one huge problem with conspiracist 
>thinking; the other (which Chip has admirably and consistently highlighted) 
>is that it lends itself to scapegoating (the core logic of any conspiracist 
>story entails the need to identify and stop the conspirators). None of this 
>means that conspiracies don't happen, or that they are trivial; only that 
>they aren't the motor of history and you won't advance a progressive cause 
>much by getting mired at that level of analysis.
>
>Mark Rupert
>
>Political Science
>
>Syracuse University
>
>merupert at maxwell.syr.edu <mailto:merupert at maxwell.syr.edu>
>
>
>
>
>________________________________
>
>
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>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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