From: "Todd Archer"
Gee, you think? Maybe it's because the conspiranoids on the list have been going bananas lately.
^^^^ CB:
The anti-conspiracy theory police seem to consider any mention of any socalled conspiracy theory as going bananas.
^^^^^
>It's like an
>LBO superstition. It's become knee jerk.
Good. Knee-jerk conspiracism should be met with a response of knee-jerk deflating. It means we're getting used to seeing the crap and responding appropriately.
^^^^ CB: However, the socalled conspiracy theorists do not , in a knee-jerk manner, respond to every event by explaining it as a conspiracy. Whereas, the anti-conspiracists do , like an unthinking reflex, score anything that fits their concept of "conspiracy theory".
^^^^
>Also, it's selective and
>inconsistent , in the sense, that nobody bats an eyelash when somebody
>asserts that , say 9/11, was a conspiracy by Al Q.
So? That _was_ a conspiracy.
^^^^ CB: Well, now we are getting down to it , aren't we ? I take it you mean it was a conspiracy but not the conspiracy that the "conspiracy theorists" say it was. From my observations , the anti-c police on this list, aren't against saying that a given event was a conspiracy. What they are against is saying that the U.S. government was involved in a conspiracy.
To get right to the point, why do you so readily accept the monopoly media version of those events ?
^^^^^^^
What conspiranoids do is drag in innuendo, lack of information, and intellectual laziness and parade it as research.
^^^^^^^ CB: So, how is it that you are not doing the same thing by automatically accepting the monopoly media version of those events ? Why is what you see on television "information" ? Did you do research to corroborate the media version of what happened ? ^^^^^^
Conspiranoid thinking posits that BushCo were "behind the whole thing". Or it was the Israelis. Or some such thing. No proof. Just iron-clad innuendo.
^^^^^^ CB: Some of the thinking that has been labelled on this list conspiracy theory has presented evidence of as good a quality as the evidence of the version you accept. Show me your proof of the conspiracy you think happened. If we were in court, I'd attack the bias and credibility of your witnesses. In other words, you don't hold yourself to the same standard of proofs and evidence that you require of socalled conspiracy theorists, both on the particular issue of 9/11, but really on most issues asserted on this list.
>For some reason, saying
>that is not conspiracy theorism. But if there is any discussion of U.S.
>government machinations, many people here feel compelled to point out that
>it's conspiracy theorism ohhhhh bad.
Where has anyone dissed the whole idea of, say, Iran-Contra Gate?
^^^^^^^^ CB: Check the archives. Carrol did it the other day.
^^^^^^
Small-c conspiracies happen, and we usually find out about them after the fact. But
conspiracISM is something of a different order.
^^^^ CB: I'm glad you mentioned socalled conspiracISM. Discussion of evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy on 9/11 does not at all mean that a person has a general approach of _explaining everything_ in terms of conspiracies; does not constitute conspiracISM. That is one of the main logical errors of the anti-conspiracy police on this list. For example, I discuss the JFK murder plot, but I don't have a general approach of _explaining_ things in terms of conspiracies. This is exactly one of the senses in which the anti-conspiracy police have gone bananas; they leap to the unwarranted conclusion that any discussion of a non-official version of some big news event implies that the discussant has a general approach of explaining everything by conspiracies. _That's_ lazy thinking by the anti-c police.
^^^^^^^
>Some discussion of plots by the ruling class _should_ take place on the
>left, because it exposes them as "bad people", which is an elementary way
>of
>bringing some people to question the system , and thereby look bring them
>into the movement.
Why should a few plots (and what plots are you talking about?) be put at the
center of what should be a plan of education?
^^^^^ CB: Show me exactly where I said discussion of a few plots should be put at the _center_ of what should be a plan of education.
Some of the plots I am talking about are the JFK, MLK, RFK, Black Panther murders. COINTELPRO. ENRON would be another good one. The S & L scandal. Iran-Contra, as you mentioned. Hell, the whole set of lies given as the basis for invading Iraq. The theft of the 2000 election by Bush and company. There are a few.
You have to show that something is rotten in a common sense way. Most people don't have much interest in abstract oppression and exploitation off the rip. They have to get upset about a more concrete wrong, before they might get to the more general issues.
^^^^^^^
It's like arguing that history is best taught by the "Great Man" theory for beginners. Why can't people be taught primarily about systems of social power brought about by ownership? Less likelihood of their thinking that merely by "getting rid" of this person or that, that things can be made to change radically. It leads into electoralism and/or bourgeois revolutionism.
^^^^ CB: This seems another fallacy in the anti-c police thinking. To say that there is evidence that the 9/11 conspiracy (since you agree it _was_ a conspiracy, evidently) is not exactly as it was put out by the ruling class media is not to put forth an explanation of _history_. Where the do you get that this is explaining history ? To say that JFK was assasinated by another section of the ruling class is _not_ explaining history. For one thing, his death was not nearly a change in the mode of production :>). It was not a major historical event. The history in that had to do with the main arena of class struggle at that time, which was the Cold War. Some rightwingers decided he was soft on Communism.
So, to use this as a little example. You start out talking to someone about the anti-democracy of the coup d'etat/JFK assassination, how it was motivated by rabid anti-Sovietism. You then get to the Cold War as the main front of the class struggle in the world at the time. Then you can get into what the class struggle is in general, 1917 Great October Revolution , the Soviet Union, why the U.S. made anti-Sovietism the centerpiece of its foreign policy. And, Voila, you are talking about systems, not individuals. You have taken someone who has started to question the system a little because of the JFK assassination to a deeper understanding.
And , no,I didn't say this is the only or main way to try to reach someone. But it is ridiculous to say you aren't going to discuss at all something that is on so many people's minds, such as 9/11 or the JFK murder. That's sectarian or self-isolating. You have to speak with people where they are.
Discussion of the assassination of JFK or the theft of the Florida election would make someone less sanquine about the effectiveness of electoralism, seems to me. I can think of people who said we have to socalled work outside the system , in part because they thought the assassinations in that period showed elections could be cheated.
>Many people who joined the movement in the 60's and 70's
>had as part of their process of becoming disillusioned with the American
>Establishment the experience of"conspiracies": assassination of Kennedy,
>MLK
>and RFK, Hampton other Black Panthers, Cointelpro.
Starting off with "disillusionment", while a "fortunate" accident that gets people thinking outside of the box, doesn't equip them to "go further" and turn that disillusionment into something more positive.
^^^^^^^ CB: I didn't say it did. I didn't say that _only_ or even _mainly_ or _centrally_ conspiracies should be discussed. I said they discussion of them shouldn't be banana-shunned on this list and the left. I said that it is nonsense and misapplication of anti-Big Man theory of history to discourage discussion of plot theories that contradict the monopoly media versions of events that everybody knows was a conspiracy by _somebody_. Amazingly, what your position seems to be is that we should only not speculate about the U.S. government plotting. It's ok by you to speculate or discuss non-Americans or non-government people committing political crimes.
I mean Chip Berlet's main work is describing non-governmental political conspiracies by rightwingers. Does he have a Big Man theory of history ?
^^^^
And this discussion of disillusionment has little, if anything, to do with conspiracism.
^^^^ CB: What's your support for this assertion ?
My discussion of disillusionment here has been connected to discussion of conspiracies by government and Establishment figures.
The label "Conspiracism" is , in general on this list, a slanderous innuendo. ^^^^^^
>When I say Chip is trying to "purge" it, I don't mean he has the power to
>put anyone in prison , but rather he is trying, by the force of argument,
>to
>make it unpopular with leftists.
I didn't think you thought Chip had police powers. Purging doesn't have to mean locking people up.
And I say more power to the Chip Berlets of the world for labouring to make conspiracism shunned by anyone, let alone our side.
(Even if those Chip Berlets don't reply to letters . . . . <grumble>)
Todd ^^^^^^^
CB: "ConspiracISM" is misapplied to most discussions of plots on this list. To speculate about a specific plot does not imply that one has a conspiracy theory of history.
Chip B does not labor to get anyone to shun discussion of conspiracies by Neo-Nazis or the KKK types, which is good, but it contradicts your claim above.