[lbo-talk] The Problem of Conspiracy Theorists at the Anti-War Meeting Yesterday

[wrobert at uci.edu]

Ironically, I had heard about this same meeting from a friend of a friend
and had the same response of despair.  To get to this question though,
conspiracy theory operates on a logic of expressive causality.  Rather
than looking at global capitalism as a complex overdetermined disciplinary
system, blame is placed at the feet of a small group of men who are seen
as being nearly omnipotent.  Conspiracy occurs within capitalism, however
it cannot explain the basic mechanisms of the system.  I was just at
Mayday books (a Mpls radical bookstore) and all the people who have worked
there now buy into this stuff.  I really can't understand how people who
are ostensibly Marxist could buy into this stuff....

                                robert wood


> Yoshie:  why not 9-11 conspiracy theorists?  The
> anti-war position or movement is multi-layered.  The
> deeper you go with it the more solid your opposition
> should be.  On the most superficial level the
> Democrats say the war was "mismanaged".  The next
> level down would be popular demands to bring US troops
> home.  Neither of these levels touch the morality,
> legality or causes of the war, nor the issue of
> permanent bases in Iraq, nor the possibility of a new
> war with Iran.  The deepest level is opposition to the
> entire political/economic complex that produces wars,
> and many 9-11 conspiracists are on that level, though
> not all.