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**Dave Stratman** · July 04, 2011, 02:29 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Good piece, Don.

Here's an in-depth analysis of conspiracy theory that we published at Newdemocracyworld.org some years ago which is quite relevant today. (http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/conspiracy.htm)

CONSPIRACY THEORY AS
NAIVE DECONSTRUCTIVE HISTORY

by Floyd Rudmin
April, 2003
newdemocracyworld.org

Floyd Rudmin is a member of the Psychology Department, University of Troms�, Troms�, Norway.

"Conspiracy theory" is usually used as a pejorative label, meaning paranoid, nutty, marginal, and certainly untrue. The power of this pejorative is that it discounts a theory by attacking the motivations and mental competence of those who advocate the theory. By labeling an explanation of events "conspiracy theory," evidence and argument are dismissed because they come from a mentally or morally deficient personality, not because they have been shown to be incorrect. Calling an explanation of events "conspiracy theory" means, in effect, "We don't like you, and no one should listen to your explanation."

In earlier eras other pejorative labels, such as "heresy," "witchery," and "communism" also worked like this. The charge of "conspiracy theory" is not so severe as these other labels, but in its way is many times worse. Heresy, witchcraft, and communism at least retain some sense of potency. They designate ideas to be feared. "Conspiracy theory" implies that the ideas and their advocates are simple-minded or insane.

All such labels implicitly define a community of orthodox believers and try to banish or shun people who challenge orthodox beliefs. Members of the community who are sympathetic to new thoughts might shy away from the new thoughts and join in the shunning due to fear of being tainted by the pejorative label.

There is currently a boom in books on conspiracy theory, most of them derogatory, as is evident in some recent titles: Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics; Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to the X-Files; Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From.

Within popular US culture, there is also now a boom in movies, novels, and web sites that feature conspiracy theories. The apparent popularity of conspiracy theories is often cited as a cause of concern, that our society is breaking down. For example, Canadian journalist Robert Sibley has said that conspiracy theory is "a nihilistic vortex of delusion and superstition that negates reality itself."

I think that just the reverse is true. There is nothing insane or sinister about conspiracy theory research. It is rather matter of fact. A wide range of ordinary people from many walks of life take an interest in the political and economic events of our era. They think things through on their own, use the library, seek for evidence, articulate a theory, communicate with other people with similar interests. It is heartening that some citizens invest time and effort to unearth and expose some of the conspiracies that damage our society, our economy and our government.

But it certainly does seem that some historians and journalists are quite frightened of conspiracy theory and its wide popularity. Those are the two professions whose job it is to interpret our world for us. When ordinary people take on the task of doing this themselves, it must mean that they don't believe what the authorities say we should. Maybe the professionals feel threatened when amateurs think about political events for themselves.

Perhaps we are in the middle of a new Reformation. The high priests are again losing their monopoly, and they see us sliding into cults and chaos. Something similar happened in 1517, when Martin Luther challenged the Church and translated the Bible into German so that ordinary people could think about theology for themselves. When put on trial, Luther said, "I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the Councils, because it is clear as day they have frequently erred and contradicted each other." That is exactly what a JFK conspiracy theorist would say about the Warren Commission.

People take on the task of explaining things for themselves when the orthodox experts insist on saying nonsense—for example, that Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed JFK. A Reformation is a rebellion against arrogance. If historians and journalists want to understand why they are being displaced by conspiracy theory, it would be most reasonable to examine their own failings first.

The correct big-word label for conspiracy theory would be "naive deconstructive history." It is "history" because it explains events, but only after they have happened. Past-tense. Conspiracy theory, as a political act, is an after-the-fact complaint. To see conspiracies while they are happening would require the resources and powers of police forces and espionage agencies.

Conspiracy theory is "deconstructive history" because it is in rebellion against official explanations and against orthodox journalism and orthodox history. Conspiracy theory is radically empirical: tangible facts are the focus, especially facts that the standard stories try to overlook. There is a ruthless reduction down to what is without doubt real, namely, persons. Conspiracy theory presumes that human events are caused by people acting as people do, including cooperating, planning, cheating, deceiving, and pursuing power. Thus, conspiracy theories do not focus on impersonal forces like geo-politics, market economics, globalization, social evolution and other such abstract explanations of human events.

To call conspiracy theory "naive" does not mean that it is uncritical or stupidly innocent. In fact, that is what conspiracy theorists might say about orthodox explanations of events promoted by government sources, by mainstream journalism, or by schoolbook history. For example, it is naive to believe that the September 11, 1973, coup d'etat against Allende was not orchestrated by the United States. Rather, to here call deconstructive history "naive" means that conspiracy theorists are unaware that they are doing deconstructive history, and they are amateurs, untrained in deconstructive history.

Conspiracy theories arise when dramatic events happen, and the orthodox explanations try to diminish the events and gloss them over. In other words, conspiracy theories begin when someone notices that the explanations do not fit the facts.

Take the case of explaining the past two decades of US "free-trade" schemes among countries in the Americas: FTA, NAFTA, and soon FTAA. These schemes began with two nations, then three, and soon four and more. The first was the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which set the subservient conditions of member nations to US economic dominance. The essence of the FTA is that US corporations get unrestricted commercial rights and resource ownership in Canada, and in exchange, Canada gets to obey US trade laws.

Why would Canadians have agreed to this? Well, we didn't, but historians would explain it by saying something like, "Globalization made Canadians choose free-trade." Conspiracy theorists would say, "Don't be naive. Look at the facts." In a decade of political opinion polls, and in three consecutive national elections (1984, 1988, 1993), a majority of Canadians had consistently said that they do not want American "free-trade" schemes. How has it happened that such a clear, strong democratic decision by so many millions of Canadians could be overthrown?

In the 1984 and 1993 federal elections in Canada, the successful parties had explicitly campaigned against free-trade, but when elected they reversed themselves. The 1988 vote was also not straight: of the two anti-free-trade parties, the minor one in mid-campaign began to attack the leader of the major one. It is reasonable to see such facts and to surmise that orthodox explanations are not the real explanations.

Let's look in the library to see what can be found. From 1976 to 1979, more than a decade before the FTA, US Ambassador Thomas Enders was crisscrossing Canada promoting free-trade. Who was Thomas Enders? He was hired by the US government in 1958 as an "intelligence research specialist." In 1969 he was in Yugoslavia, in 1971 Cambodia. His jobs there were to rig Lon Nol's election and to use a local intelligence network to pick villages to be bombed by B52s in President Nixon's secret war. From 1976 to 1979, he was in Canada weaving a web of political and business connections to promote the American version of "free-trade." In 1981 Enders became President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, working on the invasion of Grenada and the illegal proxy wars against Nicaragua and El Salvador. One of his jobs was to coordinate operations with Oliver North and Duane Claridge, head of the CIA's covert operations in Latin America.

Considering these facts, which is more likely—that Enders was in Canada promoting free-trade as some kind of personal hobby, or that he was under orders, promoting free-trade as one more operation in a career of covert operations? At the time, Quebec's populist premier, R�ne L�vesque, said of Enders, "He's the bum who launched the bombs in Vietnam. He's a damned spy. He must be working for the CIA" (quoted in Lis�e, 1990, p. 207).

The idea of NAFTA first appeared in public in 1979, to everyone's surprise, as Ronald Reagan's core policy when he announced his candidacy for President. But, curiously, it was then never again mentioned in his campaign. In 1979, Reagan's campaign was run by Michael Deaver and Paul Hannaford, who reportedly also ran a public relations firm that represented the right-wing Guatemalan group Amigos del Pais and its leader Roberto Alejos, who had provided the ranch used for CIA training of Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion forces in 1961. In early 1980 William Casey became Reagan's campaign director. Casey began his career directing OSS espionage operations in Germany and China in the 1940s, and he ended his career as director of the CIA. It is not common for US presidential candidates to be so managed by those so linked to covert operations.

The information in the proceeding two paragraphs comes from library sources. "Free-trade" comes from the dark lower bowels of Washington sometime in the early 1970s. It seems to have been conceived and promoted, in part, by conspiracy rather than by forthright democratic processes.

This exemplifies how conspiracy theory arises: 1) significant political or economic events change power relationships in our society; 2) contradictions are noticed by ordinary citizens in the explanations of these events; 3) concern and curiosity are aroused; 4) further information is sought under the presumption that power is being abused and deception is being deployed. Most of the evidence discovered is circumstantial, as it must be when investigating conspiracies.
"Free-trade" was definitely not the democratic choice of Canadians, and maybe not of Americans or Mexicans either. There is a history waiting to be written about these "free-trade" schemes. Orthodox, school-book historians will probably not write that history, and mainstream journalists will not dig it out. Conspiracy theorists might. (Did anyone notice that the NAFTA treaty was not legally passed by Congress as a treaty?)

Conspiracy theory has a special focus on contradictions, discrepancies, and missing facts. The natural sciences similarly seek to find faulty explanations by focusing on facts that don't fit the orthodox explanations. If we want more truthful explanations of events, whether of scientific events or of political and historical events, then we must compare competing explanations.

One explanation usually fits the available observations better than the other. By the principle of fit, the explanation that encompasses more of the observations should be preferred. This principle can favor conspiracy theories. For example, one gunman cannot shoot a bolt-action rifle as fast as the shots were fired at JFK. The vast majority of eye-witnesses heard shots coming from different directions.

We can discover mis-explanations and find better ones by focusing on the facts that don't fit. For example, Galileo concluded that moons around Jupiter are discrepancies to the then-orthodox geocentric theory. Galileo was called a heretic for writing that. Mark Lane's book, Rush to Judgment, includes hundreds of facts that did not fit the Warren Commission's conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. Lane was called a conspiracy theorist for writing that.
The pejorative force of the "conspiracy theory" label comes from its ad hominem attack on the author's personality. It is true that conspiracy theory authors doubt the orthodox explanations and suspect that there are other explanations for events. Such doubt and suspicion, which is the same kind of doubt and suspicion as motivates many scientific discoveries, gets labeled paranoia.

Think for a moment. Most of the US population believes that a conspiracy, not a lone gunman, killed JFK. A society could not function if that many people were "paranoid." That word is pure pejorative. Real paranoia includes: 1) fear, 2) of a prominent person, 3) whom you think threatens you personally, 4) using invisible means, like the evil-eye, x-rays, or laser beams. Conspiracy theory entails doubt and suspicion, but that is far from clinical paranoia. For example, I believe the Iran-Contra conspiracy theory, but I have no emotion of fear, certainly no fear that Oliver North is out to get me, using invisible rays of some kind.

However, we should remember that conspiracy theorists are ordinary people and will show ordinary failings of rationality, for example, what is referred to as "confirmation bias." This means that we are all biased to look for evidence that our ideas are right rather than for evidence that our ideas are wrong. This bias has been demonstrated and replicated in many different contexts and countries. Confirmation bias is a common mistake made by conspiracy theorists, as well as by historians, journalists, and everyone else. David Fischer has catalogued and exemplified over 100 different kinds of faulty reasoning in the research of competent, published historians. These would all apply to conspiracy theorists as well.
Conspiracy theory is more thoughtful than fearful. The motivations behind conspiracy theory research are cognitive and social. It is very much like doing family genealogy. You begin with a few facts. Then you puzzle out the story, make inferences and hypotheses, and seek further facts. With help from other people, with good luck, you discover information that is sometimes difficult to find. A story emerges, suggesting new facts that should be sought. The satisfaction comes from finding the facts, constructing the story, and sharing the process and discoveries with other people.

Conspiracy theorists think they are serving the public good. Often their motivations are patriotic, and with good reason. Democracy is built on distrust of the king and all the king's men. Democratic safeguards like habeas corpus, jury trial, independent courts, and secret ballots all presume that we should not trust people in positions of power. Because of distrust, opposition parties and an independent press are expected to question and criticize the government, and the government is expected to answer. The free press is called the Fourth Estate, in opposition to the First Estate (the Church), the Second Estate (the aristocracy), and the Third Estate (those who live off capital). Since orthodox journalism has become an instrument of power, investigative journalism is now sometimes called the Fifth Estate. Conspiracy theory is part of the Fifth Estate in this balance of powers. The independent, oppositional thinking that underlies conspiracy theory is not paranoia; it is the very foundation of freedom and democracy.

There probably appear to be more "conspiracy theories" about for three reasons: 1) More people have the skills and resources to look for conspiracies and to make their thinking public; 2) Probably there are more conspiracies to find as political and economic power become ever more concentrated and our democracy declines; 3) Mainstream journalism and schoolbook history now serve the state and corporate interests more than in the past, so now we hear more nonsense.
Conspiracy theory will certainly be a growth industry for the foreseeable future. Conspiracy theory will decrease when conspiracies decrease and when journalists and historians increase their efforts to explain events rather than explain them away.

References:

Barkun, M. (2003). A culture of conspiracy: Apocalyptic visions in contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barlow, M. & Clarke, T. (1998). MAI: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the threat to American freedom. New York: Stoddart.

Brandt, D. (1993). NAMEBASE. San Antonio: Public Information Research.

Camp, G. S. (1997). Selling fear: Conspiracy theories and end-times paranoia. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

Chodos, R. (1978). "From Enders to Chretien to Horner to you: Continentalism rears its head." Last Post, 6(6).

Clark, G. K. (1967). The critical historian. London: Heinemann.

Clarke, T. & Barlow, M. 1997). MAI: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the threat to Canadian sovereignty. Toronto: Stoddart.

Clarkson, F. (1986). "Behind the supply lines." Covert Action Information Bulletin, (25), 56, 50-53.

Coughlin, P. T. (1999). Secrets, plots and hidden agendas: What you don't know about conspiracy theories. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Fenster, M. (1999). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture. London: University of Minnesota Press.

Fischer, D. H. (1970). Historians' fallacies. New York: Harper & Row.

Hidell, A., & D'Arc, J. (1999). The conspiracy reader: From the deaths of JFK and John Lennon to government-sponsored alien cover-ups. Secaucus, NJ: Carol.

Hofstadter, R. (1965). The paranoid style in American politics. New York: Knopf.

Hurtig, M. (1991). The betrayal of Canada. Toronto: Stoddart.

Jackson, D. (2000). Conspiranoia!: The mother of all conspiracies. New York: Plume.

Johnson, G. (1983). Architects of fear: Conspiracy theories and paranoia in American politics. Los Angeles: Tarcher.

Klepper, S. (1981). "The United States in El Salvador." Covert Action Information Bulletin, (12), 5-13.

Knight, P. (2000). Conspiracy culture: From the Kennedy assassination to the X-Files. London: Routledge.

Knight, P. (Ed.) (2002). Conspiracy nation: The politics of paranoia in postwar America. London: New York University Press.

Lane, M. (1966). Rush to judgement. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Lis�e, J. F. (1990). In the eye of the eagle. Toronto: HarperCollins.

Manktelow, K. & Over, D. (Eds.) (1993). Rationality: Psychological and philosophical perspectives. London: Routledge.

Marcus, G. E. K(Ed.) (1999). Paranoia within reason. A casebook on conspiracy as an explanation. London: University of Chicago Press.

Munslow, A. (1997). Deconstructing history. London: Routledge.

Orchard. D. (1993) The fight for Canada. Toronto: Stoddart.

Parish, J., & Parker, M. (Eds.) (2001). The age of anxiety: Conspiracy theory and the human sciences. Oxford: Blackwell.

Persico J. E. (1991). Casey: From the OSS to the CIA. New York: Penquin.

Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy: How the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from. New York: Free Press.

Preston, W. & Ray, E. (1983). "Disinformation and mass deception: Democracy as a cover story." Covert Action Information Bulletin, (19), 3-12.

Ross, R. (Producer) (1992, April 7). "Investigating the October Surprise." PBS documentary.

Shawcross, W. (1979). Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the destruction of Cambodia. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Sibley, R. (1998, Feb. 8). "Conspiracy theories." Ottawa Citizen.

Sklar, H. (1988). Washington's war on Nicaragua. Boston: South End Press.

US State Department (1974). Biographic register. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

White, T. H. (1982). America in search of itself: The making of the President 1956 -1980. New York: Harper and Row.

Woodward, B. (1987). Veil: The secret wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. New York: Pocket Books.

Back

**don** · July 04, 2011, 05:12 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

It amazes me that intelligent people diss the power of the rich and powerful to coordinate their efforts to consolidate and expand their hold on the political economy, despite 100s of million spent on think tanks, PR firms, etc., not to mention a billion dolar presidential campaign war chest per candidate. Truly amazing.

**c1ue** · July 05, 2011, 12:42 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

The article is interesting but falsely lumps all conspiracy theories into the category of truth.

Some conspiracy theories are in fact just nutty, while others are neither empirical nor discerning.

I do agree that conspiracies can exist, and furthermore that some conspiracy theories are possibly factual, but the red flag is usually that a person who believes one believes most others.

Clearly at that point a bias against anything 'not' conspiracy exists.

**unlucky** · July 05, 2011, 05:19 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

"Conspiracy theory" is certainly a pejorative label, but both of these articles are wide of the mark in claiming that's all it is.

A conspiracy theory tries to explain certain events as being caused by a widespread and secret conspiracy of large numbers of people. These theories are inherently implausible because of the difficulty in maintaining secrecy and cooperation among large groups, especially when competing interests are involved. "Implausible" is of course not the same thing as "demonstrably false".

Of course, if you assume from the start that "the rich", "the powerful", and "the government" are involved in a massive conspiracy, then you can use this to explain pretty much anything that happens. And unfortunately that seems to be the starting point for many conspiracy theorists.

**bart** · July 05, 2011, 06:05 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Still my all time favorite in the conspiracy area: A very good short essay on "Unconscious Conspiracies".

**Dave Stratman** · July 05, 2011, 09:26 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by c1ue View Post

The article is interesting but falsely lumps all conspiracy theories into the category of truth.

Some conspiracy theories are in fact just nutty, while others are neither empirical nor discerning.

I do agree that conspiracies can exist, and furthermore that some conspiracy theories are possibly factual, but the red flag is usually that a person who believes one believes most others.

Clearly at that point a bias against anything 'not' conspiracy exists.

I'm not sure which article you're referring to here, but it doesn't seem to me that either of them "falsely lumps all conspiracy theories into the category of truth." Could you point out where they do that?

The idea that "usually that a person who believes one believes most others" is pure and simple bullshit. It's a way of dismissing serious questions with a broad-brush ad hominem attack: "this person believes Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, which is a conspiracy theory. Therefore this and anything else this person believes that does not accept the official line does not have to be considered on its merits."

Robert and Rudmin both present specific examples of arguments which they believe to be true but which anyone who holds or professes publicly is smeared by the media as a conspiracy theorist. Rather than arguing against straw men--"usually people who believe one believe most others"--why don't you deal with the concrete examples they have given?

**Dave Stratman** · July 05, 2011, 09:44 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by unlucky View Post

"Conspiracy theory" is certainly a pejorative label, but both of these articles are wide of the mark in claiming that's all it is.

A conspiracy theory tries to explain certain events as being caused by a widespread and secret conspiracy of large numbers of people. These theories are inherently implausible because of the difficulty in maintaining secrecy and cooperation among large groups, especially when competing interests are involved. "Implausible" is of course not the same thing as "demonstrably false".

Of course, if you assume from the start that "the rich", "the powerful", and "the government" are involved in a massive conspiracy, then you can use this to explain pretty much anything that happens. And unfortunately that seems to be the starting point for many conspiracy theorists.

Where did the idea of large numbers of people get involved here? In his brilliant book, Griftopia, Matt Taibbi explains in extensive detail how insurance industry lobbyists scripted most of Obama's Health Care bill. I'm not sure if this sort of thing would properly be called a conspiracy, but it seems to fit the definition: a group of people with a great deal of power acting together out of public view creating laws the effects of which will be the opposite of what their authors publicly claimed; that is, they wrote a bill whose proclaimed goal is to strengthen the health care available to every American, when its real purpose and effect is to enrich the insurance companies (and not incidentally pour great amounts of funding from a grateful industry into the coffers of the Democratic Party).

All that was required for this conspiracy to succeed was for those in power to continue falsifying the real nature of the Health Care act and for the corporate media to cooperate in the falsification. Since the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, Wall Street, and the Administration have an affinity of interests, it's not too much of a stretch that they would cooperate in repeating the same lies, is it?

Rather than speaking is generalities, I suggest you examine one or two of the examples that Roberts and Rudmin give and show us wherein they err.

**c1ue** · July 05, 2011, 04:24 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

I'm not sure which article you're referring to here, but it doesn't seem to me that either of them "falsely lumps all conspiracy theories into the category of truth." Could you point out where they do that?

The idea that "usually that a person who believes one believes most others" is pure and simple bullshit. It's a way of dismissing serious questions with a broad-brush ad hominem attack: "this person believes Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, which is a conspiracy theory. Therefore this and anything else this person believes that does not accept the official line does not have to be considered on its merits."

Robert and Rudmin both present specific examples of arguments which they believe to be true but which anyone who holds or professes publicly is smeared by the media as a conspiracy theorist. Rather than arguing against straw men--"usually people who believe one believe most others"--why don't you deal with the concrete examples they have given?

I was referring to "Conspiracy Theory as Naive Deconstructive History"

The article repeatedly makes use of terminology as if conspiracy theorists are all independently coming up with ideas, when in reality these ideas arise from a few (and consistent) sources.

For example:

. A wide range of ordinary people from many walks of life take an interest in the political and economic events of our era. They think things through on their own, use the library, seek for evidence, articulate a theory, communicate with other people with similar interests.

As someone who spent considerable time debating the 9/11 demolition - from that conversation it was abundantly clear that very little original thinking was being put forward by the opposite side of the debate. It was all about Alex Jones said this, Professor So and So said that.

In contrast I (as well as others including EJ) put forward a number of original numerical analyses which were invariably responded to by either the ex cathedra arguments above or "the government hid/destroyed the evidence".

That same paragraph goes on to say:

It is heartening that some citizens invest time and effort to unearth and expose some of the conspiracies that damage our society, our economy and our government.

But in fact it isn't "some citizens" - it is someone promoting a media position. Alex Jones is clearly no longer an average citizen but a media personality.

It is exactly from this small circle of sources by which I make my comment.

The author himself clearly is attempting to justify conspiracy theory.

For example:

People take on the task of explaining things for themselves when the orthodox experts insist on saying nonsense—for example, that Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed JFK.

Umm ok. It isn't that the conspiracy could not be true, it is the rank dismissal of Oswald's capability (qualified as a sharpshooter in the Marines) to shoot and kill someone from 88 yards away.

88 yards with a bolt action rifle and a 4x scope is something which any reasonably qualified shooter can make - and Oswald had routinely qualified to hit head sized targets at 200 feet as a Marine. Unless it can be shown that Oswald wasn't there, to dismiss his possible involvement is itself false.

The last sentence is the biggest doozy:

Conspiracy theory will decrease when conspiracies decrease and when journalists and historians increase their efforts to explain events rather than explain them away.

Uh ok. What exactly is the difference? That the 'truth' is being oppressed by da gubmint?

I'm perfectly willing to listen to alternative explanations, but I'm not willing to accept faulty reasoning, poor justification, suspend my disbelief, etc etc.

**KGW** · July 05, 2011, 05:40 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Make this go away. . .

**don** · July 06, 2011, 10:11 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Andrew Gavin Marshall

**don** · July 06, 2011, 10:33 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

So Marshall's research indicates practically all social study programs are dependent on large corporate funding. We all 'know' political correctness comes from academia. Ergo, who thought up . . . oops, Polly want a conspiracy theory

**Dave Stratman** · July 06, 2011, 11:07 AM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by c1ue View Post

I was referring to "Conspiracy Theory as Naive Deconstructive History"

The article repeatedly makes use of terminology as if conspiracy theorists are all independently coming up with ideas, when in reality these ideas arise from a few (and consistent) sources.

For example:

As someone who spent considerable time debating the 9/11 demolition - from that conversation it was abundantly clear that very little original thinking was being put forward by the opposite side of the debate. It was all about Alex Jones said this, Professor So and So said that.

In contrast I (as well as others including EJ) put forward a number of original numerical analyses which were invariably responded to by either the ex cathedra arguments above or "the government hid/destroyed the evidence".

That same paragraph goes on to say:

But in fact it isn't "some citizens" - it is someone promoting a media position. Alex Jones is clearly no longer an average citizen but a media personality.

It is exactly from this small circle of sources by which I make my comment.

The author himself clearly is attempting to justify conspiracy theory.

For example:

Umm ok. It isn't that the conspiracy could not be true, it is the rank dismissal of Oswald's capability (qualified as a sharpshooter in the Marines) to shoot and kill someone from 88 yards away.

88 yards with a bolt action rifle and a 4x scope is something which any reasonably qualified shooter can make - and Oswald had routinely qualified to hit head sized targets at 200 feet as a Marine. Unless it can be shown that Oswald wasn't there, to dismiss his possible involvement is itself false.

The last sentence is the biggest doozy:

Uh ok. What exactly is the difference? That the 'truth' is being oppressed by da gubmint?

I'm perfectly willing to listen to alternative explanations, but I'm not willing to accept faulty reasoning, poor justification, suspend my disbelief, etc etc.

OK, let me see if I've got this straight. Floyd Rudmin is saying that "conspiracy theory" is a pejorative term used to marginalize people who question the officially-approved line on important events. Rudmin maintains that conspiracy theories represent "naive deconstructive history," attempts by people untrained in history or related disciplines who, doubting the official story, do what research they can on their own. Rudmin does not �lump all conspiracy theories into the category of truth,� as you claimed.

You, however, have experience arguing with "conspiracy theorists" about 9/11 and have found that they don't do their own research but quote Alex Jones (whom Rudmin doesn't seem to have discovered) and �Professor So and so.� You also apparently have proved mathematically that 19 guys in a cave in A

fghanistan

blew up the WTC. (You may even have proved that those pesky WMD are still hidden somewhere; in fact, they can probably be found in whatever country it is that our gubmint would like to invade next.)

You also claim that Rudmin�s statement, that Oswald could not have successfully fired three shots from 88 yards with the rifle he was supposed to have used, shows that Rudmin is not to be taken seriously. Yet the latest evidence, based on tests by a team of Italian weapons experts supervised by the Italian army at the Terni factory where Oswald�s weapon was produced, shows that your claims are quite wrong. The Italian experts concluded that Oswald could not have fired those shots in the time-frame in question. In addition an article by a former senior FBI metallurgist in the Annals of Applied Statistics shows that the ��evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed". The report, by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used.� (These tests, incidentally, were published in 2007, after Vicent Bugliosi�s 1600-page book attempting to vindicate the Warren Commission Report. They invalidate Bugliosi�s most important claims.)

Governments and their powerful corporate and banker backers lie and their lies are echoed by politicians, endlessly repeated by the media, supported by academics eager for government or foundation grants or just longevity in their careers, and a whole passel of other actors with a stake in the interpretation of social developments. Sometimes that stake is merely psychological: some people are so deeply invested in their respect for authority that they leap to support TPTB, no matter how ludicrous the claims, even if it is against their own interests.

I�m not suggesting that you are one of those people. I am simply trying to point out what I see as the value of Rudmin�s and Roberts�s articles. As our government becomes less and less democratic, and as the Masters of Great Wealth here and around the world tighten their grip, we will be subjected to ever more lying and misinformation, and the willingness to muster the courage and resources to challenge the official line will become increasingly important. In this situation, it will be important not to smear those who have the courage to try to discover the truth, even if they dare cross the line of what is officially acceptable.

Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'

Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.

In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough�.

The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.

But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day�.

In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.

They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.

The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1556184/Oswald-had-no-time-to-fire-all-Kennedy-bullets.html

Call for rethink on Kennedy shooting

Fresh debate over the assassination of President John F Kennedy has erupted following a research team's claims that bullet analysis used to show that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone was "fundamentally flawed".

The team of experts, which includes a former senior FBI scientist, is challenging the analysis of bullet fragments on which government officials based their conclusion that Oswald alone fired the two bullets that killed the president in 1963, the Washington Post reports.

At the time investigators concluded that the five bullet fragments recovered from the scene came from just two bullets, which were both traced to the same batch of bullets Oswald owned.

But an article in the Annals of Applied Statistics claims that the "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed".

The report, by William Tobin, a former FBI laboratory metallurgist, and Cliff Spiegelman and William James, of Texas University, is based on new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the batch Oswald purportedly used.

While the researchers reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved in the Dallas shooting, they urged authorities to conduct a completely fresh forensic analysis of the five bullet fragments.

The researchers believe that the bullet fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets. If the five fragments came from three or more bullets, it would mean that a second gunman's bullet would have had to have struck the president, the research team has concluded.

Despite the Warren Commission Report findings that Oswald acted alone, many continue to believe others were involved in the shooting or that it was part of a broader conspiracy which was then the subject of an official cover-up.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1551976/Call-for-rethink-on-Kennedy-shooting.html

**Serge_Tomiko** · July 06, 2011, 12:58 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

Where did the idea of large numbers of people get involved here? In his brilliant book, Griftopia, Matt Taibbi explains in extensive detail how insurance industry lobbyists scripted most of Obama's Health Care bill. I'm not sure if this sort of thing would properly be called a conspiracy, but it seems to fit the definition: a group of people with a great deal of power acting together out of public view creating laws the effects of which will be the opposite of what their authors publicly claimed; that is, they wrote a bill whose proclaimed goal is to strengthen the health care available to every American, when its real purpose and effect is to enrich the insurance companies (and not incidentally pour great amounts of funding from a grateful industry into the coffers of the Democratic Party).

All that was required for this conspiracy to succeed was for those in power to continue falsifying the real nature of the Health Care act and for the corporate media to cooperate in the falsification. Since the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, Wall Street, and the Administration have an affinity of interests, it's not too much of a stretch that they would cooperate in repeating the same lies, is it?

Rather than speaking is generalities, I suggest you examine one or two of the examples that Roberts and Rudmin give and show us wherein they err.

Most "conspiracies" are better referred to as lobbies, with yours being a great example.

**Serge_Tomiko** · July 06, 2011, 01:02 PM

Re: Paul Craig Roberts Conspiracy Theory

Originally posted by don View Post

So Marshall's research indicates practically all social study programs are dependent on large corporate funding. We all 'know' political correctness comes from academia. Ergo, who thought up . . . oops, Polly want a conspiracy theory

This is very well established. The Franktfurt School of Social Research in particular today just screams of pathological fear of white gentile society, it is remarkable it was taken seriously in its day. The original impetus to destroying the culture of America was this fear that we were one step away from Der Fuhrer, but the elite seized upon the zeitgeist when they realized that radical liberalism renders the populace very easy to control through propaganda, of which education is but one part.

Truly, the central tenants of political correctness are so absurd indoctrination is the only explanation.

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