>
> Intermediate Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theory 101
> =============================================
>
> If claim/theory offered:
> If burden of proof not met:
> If I am the one failing to meet the burden:
> Then legitimate theory, to be labelled:
> * Heterodox
> * Alternate
> * Hidden history
> * The true story
> Else if someone else fails to meet the burden:
> Illegitimate theory to be labelled:
> * Conspiracy theory
> * Pomo
> * Wingnut, nutjob, nutcase, basically some nut!
>
> Hope that helps! As soon as this makes it to the archives, I will
> make a follow-up post pointing to the URL, which should then be
> invoked in a manner akin to the use of Godwin's Law. ;-)
>
> --ravi
This is very good Ravi, but the problem in any case is elsewhere. I personally think that it is possible to distinguish well proven conspiracies -- such as the Nixon Admin's conspiracy against Daniel Ellsberg, the FBI's spying on Martin L. King Jr., --from evidentially weak or fantastic conspiracies -- such as the Protocols of Zion or the idea that the Catholic Church is behind all conspiracies. But in either case the focus of conspiracy narratives is precisely on personalities and on non-structural issues -- the focus even in "true" conspiracy narratives is precisely on those phenomena I would never want to focus on.
For example, COINTELPRO was not quite a conspiracy, but conspiracy narrators like to turn it into one. COINTELPRO was a program of the Government, kept secret from the public but not from most of those in the government. COINTELPRO was as much of a conspiracy as state repression is a conspiracy, or the "secret" wars on Laos and Cambodia were conspiracies. But those who wish to turn the well proven aspects of the COINTELPRO policy into a conspiracy narrative, put aside the point of why such policies are continually necessary to state-craft , ruling class maintenance and institutional "success." The "Palmer Raids" during the Red Scare were open, and everyone who mattered knew about them. But the underlying decision making that led to the Red Scare and the number of spies and finks that the policy necessitated are still not fully known. But essentially very similar decision making processes and institutional constraints formed the policies we know as "the Palmer Raids" and the policies we know as COINTELPRO.
In the future we might discover that the mass round ups of "illegals" after 9-11 and continuing until today were referred to by some "secret" acronym, and that the actions of the Bush Administration were much more frightening than we actually "know" today. And there will be people that will turn the institutional operations of State and Government into a conspiracy narrative. Well, perhaps as some anarchists might say "the State" is always a "conspiracy" against "the people." But that is not what conspiracy narrativists believe. They believe that a few people are breathing together underneath the rose of secrecy and, thus, controlling everyone's lives behind our backs, and if only we could turn around and see those few bad men conspiring sub rosa then the world would be (magically) different.
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