[lbo-talk] 'Conspiracy Theories' and Clandestine Politics

[M W]

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l29consp.htm

'Conspiracy Theories' and Clandestine Politics
by Jeffrey M. Bale From Lobster 29
Very few notions generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility,
and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical
importance or efficacy of political conspiracies. Even when this
belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and
restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence, and hedged about
with all sort of qualifications, it still manages to transcend the
boundaries of acceptable discourse and violate unspoken academic
taboos. The idea that particular groups of people meet together
secretly or in private to plan various courses of action, and that
some of these plans actually exert a significant influence on
particular historical developments, is typically rejected out of hand
and assumed to be the figment of a paranoid imagination. The mere
mention of the word 'conspiracy' seems to set off an internal alarm
bell which causes scholars to close their minds in order to avoid
cognitive dissonance and possible unpleasantness, since the popular
image of conspiracy both fundamentally challenges the conception most
educated, sophisticated people have about how the world operates and
reminds them of the horrible persecutions that absurd and unfounded
conspiracy theories have precipitated or sustained in the past. So
strong is this prejudice among academics that even when clear evidence
of a plot is inadvertently discovered in the course of their own
research, they frequently feel compelled, either out of a sense of
embarrassment or a desire to defuse anticipated criticism, to preface
their account of it by ostentatiously disclaiming a belief in
conspiracies. (1)

They then often attempt to downplay the significance of the plotting
they have uncovered. To do otherwise, that is, to make a serious
effort to incorporate the documented activities of conspiratorial
groups into their general political or historical analyses, would
force them to stretch their mental horizons beyond customary bounds
and, not infrequently, delve even further into certain sordid and
politically sensitive topics. Most academic researchers clearly prefer
to ignore the implications of conspiratorial politics altogether
rather than deal directly with such controversial matters.

A number of complex cultural and historical factors contribute to this
reflexive and unwarranted reaction, but it is perhaps most often the
direct result of a simple failure to distinguish between 'conspiracy
theories' in the strict sense of the term, which are essentially
elaborate fables even though they may well be based upon a kernel of
truth, and the activities of actual clandestine and covert political
groups, which are a common feature of modern politics. For this and
other reasons, serious research into genuine conspiratorial networks
has at worst been suppressed, as a rule been discouraged, and at best
been looked upon with condescension by the academic community. (2) An
entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics has
thus been consistently neglected. (3)


For decades scholars interested in politics have directed their
attention toward explicating and evaluating the merits of various
political theories, or toward analyzing the more conventional, formal,
and overt aspects of practical politics. Even a cursory examination of
standard social science bibliographies reveals that tens of thousands
of books and articles have been written about staple subjects such as
the structure and functioning of government bureaucracies, voting
patterns and electoral results, parliamentary procedures and
activities, party organizations and factions, the impact of
constitutional provisions or laws, and the like. In marked contrast,
only a handful of scholarly publications have been devoted to the
general theme of political conspiracies--as opposed to popular
anti-conspiracy treatises, which are very numerous, and specific case
studies of events in which conspiratorial groups have played some role
-- and virtually all of these concern themselves with the deleterious
social impact of the 'paranoid style' of thought manifested in classic
conspiracy theories rather than the characteristic features of real
conspiratorial politics. (4)

Only the academic literature dealing with specialized topics like
espionage, covert action, political corruption, terrorism, and
revolutionary warfare touches upon clandestine and covert political
activities on a more or less regular basis, probably because such
activities cannot be avoided when dealing with these topics. But the
analyses and information contained therein are rarely incorporated
into standard works of history and social science, and much of that
specialized literature is itself unsatisfactory. Hence there is an
obvious need to place the study of conspiratorial politics on a sound
theoretical, methodological, and empirical footing, since ignoring the
influence of such politics can lead to severe errors of historical
interpretation.

This situation can only be remedied when a clear-cut analytical
distinction has been made between classic conspiracy theories and the
more limited conspiratorial activities that are a regular feature of
politics. 'Conspiracy theories' share a number of distinguishing
characteristics, but in all of them the essential element is a belief
in the existence of a 'vast, insidious, preternaturally effective
international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of
the most fiendish character', acts which aim to 'undermine and destroy
a way of life.' (5)

Although this apocalyptic conception is generally regarded nowadays as
the fantastic product of a paranoid mindset, in the past it was often
accepted as an accurate description of reality by large numbers of
people from all social strata, including intellectuals and heads of
state. (6) The fact that a belief in sinister, all-powerful
conspiratorial forces has not been restricted to small groups of
clinical paranoids and mental defectives suggests that it fulfills
certain important social functions and psychological needs.(7)


First of all, like many other intellectual constructs, conspiracy
theories help to make complex patterns of cause-and-effect in human
affairs more comprehensible by means of reductionism and
oversimplification. Secondly, they purport to identify the underlying
source of misery and injustice in the world, thereby accounting for
current crises and upheavals and explaining why bad things are
happening to good people or vice versa. Thirdly, by personifying that
source they paradoxically help people to reaffirm their own potential
ability to control the course of future historical developments. After
all, if evil conspirators are consciously causing undesirable changes,
the implication is that others, perhaps through the adoption of
similar techniques, may also consciously intervene to protect a
threatened way of life or otherwise alter the historical process. In
short, a belief in conspiracy theories helps people to make sense out
of a confusing, inhospitable reality, rationalize their present
difficulties, and partially assuage their feelings of powerlessness.
In this sense, it is no different than any number of religious,
social, or political beliefs, and is deserving of the same serious
study.

The image of conspiracies promoted by conspiracy theorists needs to be
further illuminated before it can be contrasted with genuine
conspiratorial politics. In the first place, conspiracy theorists
consider the alleged conspirators to be Evil incarnate. They are not
simply people with differing values or run-of-the-mill political
opponents, but inhuman, superhuman, and/or anti-human beings who
regularly commit abominable acts and are implacably attempting to
subvert and destroy everything that is decent and worth preserving in
the existing world. Thus, according to John Robison, the Bavarian
Illuminati were formed 'for the express purpose of ROOTING OUT ALL THE
RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OVERTURNING ALL THE EXISTING GOVERNMENTS
IN EUROPE.' (8)

This grandiose claim is fairly representative, in the sense that most
conspiracy theorists view the world in similarly Manichean and
apocalyptic terms.

Secondly, conspiracy theorists perceive the conspiratorial group as
both monolithic and unerring in the pursuit of its goals. This group
is directed from a single conspiratorial centre, acting as a sort of
general staff, which plans and coordinates all of its activities down
to the last detail. Note, for example, Prince Clemens von Metternich's
claim that a 'directing committee' of the radicals from all over
Europe had been established in Paris to pursue their insidious
plotting against established governments. (9)

Given that presumption, it is no accident that many conspiracy
theorists refer to 'the Conspiracy' rather than (lower
case)conspiracies or conspiratorial factions, since they perceive no
internal divisions among the conspirators. Rather, as a group the
conspirators are believed to possess an extraordinary degree of
internal solidarity, which produces a corresponding degree of counter
solidarity vis-a-vis society at large, and indeed it is this very
cohesion and singleness of purpose which enables them to effectively
execute their plans to destroy existing institutions, seize power, and
eliminate all opposition.

Thirdly, conspiracy theorists believe that the conspiratorial group is
omnipresent, at least within its own sphere of operations. While some
conspiracy theories postulate a relatively localized group of
conspirators, most depict this group as both international in its
spatial dimensions and continuous in its temporal dimensions. '[T]he
conspirators planned and carried out evil in the past, they are
successfully active in the present, and they will triumph in the
future if they are not disturbed in their plans by those with
information about their sinister designs.'(10)

The conspiratorial group is therefore capable of operating virtually
everywhere. As a consequence of this ubiquitousness, anything that
occurs which has a broadly negative impact or seems in anyway related
to the purported aims of the conspirators can thus be plausibly
attributed to them.

Fourthly, the conspiratorial group is viewed by conspiracy theorists
as virtually omnipotent. In the past this group has successfully
overthrown empires and nations, corrupted whole societies, and
destroyed entire civilizations and cultures, and it is said to be in
the process of accomplishing the same thing at this very moment. Its
members are secretly working in every nook and cranny of society, and
are making use of every subversive technique known to mankind to
achieve their nefarious purposes. Nothing appears to be able to stand
in their way--unless the warnings of the conspiracy theorists are
heeded and acted upon at once. Even then there is no guarantee of
ultimate victory against such powerful forces, but a failure to
recognize the danger and take immediate countervailing action assures
the success of those forces in the near future.

Finally, for conspiracy theorists conspiracies are not simply a
regular feature of politics whose importance varies in different
historical contexts, but rather the motive force of all historical
change and development. The conspiratorial group can and does
continually alter the course of history, invariably in negative and
destructive ways, through conscious planning and direct intervention.
Its members are not buffeted about by structural forces beyond their
control and understanding, like everyone else, but are themselves
capable of controlling events more or less at will. This supposed
ability is usually attributed to some combination of demonic influence
or sponsorship, the possession of arcane knowledge, the mastery of
devilish techniques, and/or the creation of a preternaturally
effective clandestine organization. As a result, unpleasant
occurrences which are perceived by others to be the products of
coincidence or chance are viewed by conspiracy theorists as further
evidence of the secret workings of the conspiratorial group. For them,
nothing that happens occurs by accident. Everything is the result of
secret plotting in accordance with some sinister design.

This central characteristic of conspiracy theories has been aptly
summed up by Donna Kossy in a popular book on fringe ideas:

Conspiracy theories are like black holes--they suck in everything that
comes their way, regardless of content or origin...Everything you've
ever known or experienced, no matter how 'meaningless', once it
contacts the conspiratorial universe, is enveloped by and cloaked in
sinister significance. Once inside, the vortex gains in size and
strength, sucking in everything you touch. (11)


As an example of this sort of mechanism, one has only to mention the
so-called 'umbrella man', a man who opened up an umbrella on a sunny
day in Dealey Plaza just as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade was
passing. A number of 'conspiracy theorists' have assumed that this man
was signalling to the assassins, thus tying a seemingly trivial and
inconsequential act into the alleged plot to kill Kennedy. It is
precisely this totalistic, all-encompassing quality that distinguishes
'conspiracy theories' from the secret but often mundane political
planning that is carried out on a daily basis by all sorts of groups,
both within and outside of government. It should, however, be pointed
out that even if the 'umbrella man' was wholly innocent of any
involvement in a plot, as he almost certainly was, this does not mean
that the Warren Commission's reconstruction of the assassination is
accurate.

However that may be, real covert politics, although by definition
hidden or disguised and often deleterious in their impact, simply do
not correspond to the bleak, simplistic image propounded by conspiracy
theorists. Far from embodying metaphysical evil, they are perfectly
and recognizably human,

with all the positive and negative characteristics and potentialities
which that implies. At the most basic level, all the efforts of
individuals to privately plan and secretly initiate actions for their
own perceived mutual benefit --insofar as these are intentionally
withheld from outsiders and require the maintenance of secrecy for
their success--are conspiracies. Moreover, in contrast to the claims
of conspiracy theorists, covert politics are anything but monolithic.
At any given point in time, there are dozens if not thousands of
competitive political and economic groups engaging in secret planning
and activities, and most are doing so in an effort to gain some
advantage over their rivals among the others. Such behind-the-scene
operations are present on every level, from the mundane efforts of
small-scale retailers to gain competitive advantage by being the first
to develop new product lines to the crucially important attempts by
rival secret services to penetrate and manipulate each other.
Sometimes the patterns of these covert rivalries and struggles are
relatively stable over time, whereas at other times they appear fluid
and kaleidoscopic, as different groups secretly shift alliances and
change tactics in accordance with their perceived interests. Even
internally, within particular groups operating clandestinely, there
are typically bitter disagreements between various factions over the
specific courses of action to be adopted. Unanimity of opinioon
historical judgements. There is probably no way to prevent this sort
of unconscious reaction in the current intellectual climate, but the
least that can be expected of serious scholars is that they carefully
examine the available evidence before dismissing these matters out of
hand.

Footnotes

1. Compare Robin Ramsay, 'Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories and
Conspiracy Research', Lobster 19 (1990), p. 25: 'In intellectually
respectable company it is necessary to preface any reference to actual
political, economic, military or paramilitary conspiracies with the
disclaimer that the speaker "doesn't believe in the conspiracy theory
of history (or politics)".'This type of disclaimer quite clearly
reveals the speaker's inability to distinguish between bona fide
conspiracy theories and actual conspiratorial politics.

2. The word 'suppress' is not too strong here. I personally know of at
least one case in which a very bright graduate student at a
prestigious East Coast university was unceremoniously told by his
advisor that if he wanted to write a Ph.D. thesis on an interesting
historical example of conspiratorial politics he would have to go
elsewhere to do so. He ended up leaving academia altogether and became
a professional journalist, in which capacity he has produced a number
of interesting books and articles.

3. Complaints about this general academic neglect have often been made
by those few scholars who have done research on key aspects of covert
and clandestine politics which are directly relevant to this study.
See, for example, Gary Marx, 'Thoughts on a Neglected Category of
Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant',
American Journal of Sociology 80:2 (September 1974), especially pp.
402-3. One of the few dissertations dealing directly with this topic,
though not in a particularly skilful fashion, is Frederick A. Hoffman,
'Secret Roles and Provocation: Covert Operations in Movements for
social Change' (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation: UCLA Sociology
Department, 1979). There are, of course, some excellent academic
studies which have given due weight to these matters--for example,
Nurit Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary
Movement: The SR Party, 1902-1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan/ St.
Anthony's College, 1988); and Jean-Paul Brunet, La police de l'ombre:
Indicateurs et provocateurs dans la France contemporaine (Paris:
Seuil, 1990)--but such studies areunfortunately few and far between.

4. The standard academic treatments of conspiracy theories are Richard
Hofstadter, 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics', in Hofstadter,
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York:
Knopf, 1966), pp. 3-40; Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of
the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981 [1969]); J. M. Roberts, The Mythology of
the Secret Societies (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972); Johannes
Rogallavon Bieberstein, Die These von der Verschwrung, 1776-1945:
Philosophen, Freimaurer, Juden, Liberale und Sozialisten als
Verschwrergegen die Sozialordnung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1976); and Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici, eds., Changing
Conceptions of Conspiracy (New York: Springer, 1987). See also the
journalistic studies by George Johnson, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy
Theories and paranoia in American Politics (Los Angeles: Tarcher,
1983); and Jonathan Vankin, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes:
Political Manipulation and Mind Control in America (New York: Paragon
House, 1992).

5. See Hofstadter, 'Paranoid Style', pp. 14, 29.

6. Although conspiracy theories have been widely accepted in the most
disparate eras and parts of the world, and thus probably have a
certain universality as explanatory models, at certain points in time
they have taken on an added salience due to particular historical
circumstances. Their development and diffusion seems to be broadly
correlated with the level of social, economic, and political upheaval
or change, though indigenous cultural values and intellectual
traditions determine their specific form and condition their level of
popularity.

7. As many scholars have pointed out, if such ideas were restricted to
clinical paranoids, they would have little or no historical
importance. What makes the conspiratorial or paranoid style of thought
interesting and historically significant is that it frequently tempts
more or less normal people and has often been diffused among broad
sections of the population in certain periods. Conspiracy theories are
important as collective delusions, delusions which nevertheless
reflect real fears and real social problems, rather than as evidence
of individual pathologies. See, for example, Hofstadter,'Paranoid
Style', pp. 3-4.

8. See his Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and
Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of free
Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, Collected from Good
Authorities (New York: G. Forman, 1798), p. 14. This exhibits yet
another characteristic of 'conspiracy theorists'--the tendency to
over-dramatize everything by using capital letters with reckless
abandon.

9. See his 'Geheime Denkschrift nber die Grundung eines
Central-Comites der nordischen Machte in Wien', in Aus Metternichs
nachgelassenen Papieren, ed. by Richard Metternich-Winneburg (Vienna:
1881),vol. 1, p. 595, cited in Rogalla von Bieberstein, These von der
Verschwrung, pp. 139-40.

10. Dieter Groh, 'Temptation of Conspiracy Theory, Part I', in
Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, p. 3. A classic example of
conspiratorial works that view modern revolutionary movements as
little more than the latest manifestations of subversive forces with a
very long historical pedigree is the influential book by Nesta H.
Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (London: Boswell,
1924). For more on Webster's background, see the biographical study by
Richard M. Gilman, Behind World Revolution: The Strange Career of
Nesta H. Webster (Ann Arbor: Insight, 1982), of which only one volume
has so far appeared.


11. Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland:
Feral House, 1994), p. 191.

12. For more on P2, see above all the materials published by the
Italian parliamentary commission investigating the organization, which
are divided into the majority (Anselmi) report, five dissenting
minority reports, and over one hundred thick volumes of attached
documents and verbatim testimony before the commission. Compare also
Martin Berger, Historia de la loggia masonica P2 (Buenos Aires: El
Cid, 1983); Andrea Barbieri et al, L'Italia della P2 (Milan:
Mondadori, 1981); Alberto Cecchi, Storia della P2 (Rome: Riuniti,
1985); Roberto Fabiani, I massoni in Italia (Milan: L'Espresso, 1978);
Gianfranco Piazzesi, Gelli: La carriere di un eroe di questa Italia
(Milan: Garzanti, 1983); Marco Ramat et al, La resistabile ascesa
della P2: Poteri occulti e stato democratico (Bari: De Donato, 1983);
Renato Risaliti, Licio Gelli, a carte scoperte (Florence: Fernando
Brancato, 1991); and Gianni Rossi and Franceso Lombrassa, In nome
della 'loggia': Le prove di come lamassoneria segreta ha tentato di
impadronarsi dello stato italiano. Iretroscena della P2 (Rome:
Napoleone, 1981). Pro P2 works include those of Gelli supporter Pier
Carpi, Il caso Gelli: La verita sulla loggia P2 (Bologna: INEI, 1982);
and the truly Orwellian work by Gelli himself, La verita (Lugano:
Demetra, 1989), which in spite of its title bears little resemblance
to the truth.

13. For the AB, see Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom, The
Super-Afrikaners: Inside the Afrikaner Broederbond (Johannesburg:
Jonathan Ball, 1978); and J.H.P.Serfontein, Brotherhood of Power: An
Expose of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond (Bloomington and London:
Indiana University, 1978).Compare also B. M. Schoeman, Die Broederbond
in die Afrikaner-politiek (Pretoria: Aktuele, 1982); and Adrien
Pelzer, Die Afrikaner-Broederbond: Eerste 50 jaar (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 1979).

14. See his Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical
Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 74-8.