[lbo-talk] The Politics of Conspiracy Theory

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Jun 21 13:48:58 PDT 2004


From: Brad Mayer

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The flip side of this contains another political question: Why are people like Berlet so anxious to attack leftist conspiracy theorizing?

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^^^^ CB: Here's a hypothesis on Chip B. You see, his main work in studying rightwing sects is actually the study of a bunch of...conspiracies. So, I think he bends over backwards (to say the least) in shunning all other conspiracy discussions in order to make it clear that he is not in general a conspiracy theorist, because you might think he was given his main ,writing subjects.

Also, a lot of the rightwingers he studies are conspiracy theorists, and he definitely doesn't want to be "theoretically" confused with them.

So, in general , he is sort of overcompensating for sullying his hands with theorizing( describing) rightwing conspiracies by taking an extremely anti-conspiracist position. He also sort of thinks of himself as responsible for supervising the left on understanding American fascistic types and purging the left of conspiracy theorism.



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