The Golden Age of Conspiracy

June 2009

November 1963 was not the best time for liberal complacency. The assassination of John F. Kennedy on the 22nd of that month began a feast of leftist conspiratorial thinking that was to grow ever more gluttonous after the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Almost immediately, thoughtful leftists noticed a change for the worse. The veteran journalist I. F. Stone lamented in 1964, "All my adult life as a newspaperman I have been fighting in defence of the Left and of sane politics, against conspiracy theories of history, character assassination, guilt by association and demonology. Now I see elements on the Left using the same tactics in the controversy over the Kennedy assassination."

Even then, Stone thought he could divide conspiracy theories into their left- and right-wing versions. You cannot get away with that now. Francis Wheen quotes with approval the reaction of the New Yorker to the bombing of Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh in 1995: "Views that have long been shared by the far Right and far Left [have] come together, in a weird meeting of the minds, to become one and permeate the mainstream of American politics and popular culture. You can call it fusion paranoia."

Just so. To ask if Gore Vidal was behaving like a left- or a right-wing writer when he hovered over the mass graves of Oklahoma City and the Twin Towers straining for reasons to blame the US government makes no sense. He was not acting with the political motives even the crudest propagandists possess, but revealing himself as a characteristically modern type — an ecumenical conspiracy theorist, who would rather believe that 2 + 2 = 5 than ever trust an official report.

Aaronovitch goes further and not only dismisses the importance of conventional political affiliations but questions the traditional reason for fearing conspiratorial ideas, best put by Norman Cohn in Warrant for Genocide, his classic study of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "There exists," Cohn wrote,

"...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history."

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NIEVES31Kerry

April 7th, 2010
2:04 AM

Various people in all countries get the personal loans from various banks, because it's easy and fast.

rockcorn

November 7th, 2009
4:11 PM

Here's Nick's claim that the Iraq war would be fought because we owed the US $243m from WWII. We owe a lot to America - £243 million, to be precise Since 11 September we socialist faggots at The Observer have had two insults repeated in steaming emails from the US. After a homoerotic 'kiss my American ass', we are told we can't criticise Bush because 'if it wasn't for us you'd be speaking German'. The cheap riposte, 'if it wasn't for us you'd be speaking Dutch', won't do. The furious Yanks are right: Britain remains in America's debt for WWII. The last volume of Robert Skidelsky's life of J.M. Keynes has a brutal account of how America exploited Britain's wartime vulnerability. Keynes vainly tried to ensure 'we have enough assets to leave us capable of independent action'. The US made him accept that the US Empire would supplant its British rival. In return for loans, Britain had to cut exports, limit gold and dollar reserves and repay debt from 1950 onwards. Ruth Kelly, the Treasury Minister, told Parliament the other day that Britain still owed £243 million. Rather than relieve the debt of Third World peasants, Britain, she said, intended to meet the bill in full by 31 December 2006. Ms Kelly is a revelation. Until her statement, Blair's sudden enthusiasm for a needless war against Iraq was a mystery; his failure to tell Bush that British troops can't be both peace-keepers and combatants in Afghanistan, a dereliction of duty; his inability to force a concession from Washington on any issue from Kyoto to steel tariffs, a national humiliation. Now what was baffling is clear. Debtors are in no position to demand concessions from creditors. They must do as they're told. According to the Treasury, Britain will be free to have an independent foreign policy on 1 January 2007. I'll leave it to you to imagine how many wars Blair will have fought by then.

July 7th, 2009
2:07 PM

Thank you Mr Cohen, for making people think back once again at what happened that day. Although you achieved it by uttering absolute bullshit. I'm actually kinda wondering if your goal was not to support conspiracy theorists (I hate that name, lets call them people with eyes, ears, and a brain) by showing us all the holes in the Government's fairytale? If not, I would never ask you to speak up for any cause I myself defend. Jeez, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes when the truth is revealed, you will be seen as the naive, subjective and docile dude that followed his leaders to the point of contradicting himself and verified facts and who tried to ridicule their opponents just by saying that what they were saying was too big to be true...

Anonymous

June 18th, 2009
6:06 PM

Emansnas, sorry to burst your little fantasy of the Jooos controllign everything, can we stick to the facts: 1. Sharon and the rest of the leadership thought that the US was barking up the wrong tree on Iraq and that Iran was far mroe dangerous; 2. 'Jewish interests' ascribes a nefarious and monolithic intention to a people. So, um...yes, you are an antisemite. 3. In any case, you seem to suggest that the Jooooos are pulling the strings and that, svengali like, Rice, Rumsfeld and Bush were hypnotised into attacking Iraq. Let's all forge the fact that W wanted to avenge Bush Sr.'s humiliation at Saddam. But you are an antisemite and nothing will get through to you.

TSearl

June 18th, 2009
3:06 PM

Mr Cohen believed the conspiracy theories regarding Iraq and WMDs and Iraq and 9/11, and Iraq and anthrax. As a believer in those conspiracy theories he supported the illegal war on Iraq. Its hard to see why he now feels he has the insight or authority to lecture us on the evils of believing in conspiracy theories or any thing else.

emansnas

June 18th, 2009
2:06 PM

For Cohen to state, as a conspiracy, "That the Jews, once again, formed a "lobby" in the US that pushed America into a needless war against Saddam Hussein", is akin to stating: That workers, once again, formed a union in the US that pushed America into needless strife with big business. The only arguable point is the word "needless". To believe that Jewish interests promoted a war with Saddam Hussein solely for the reason that it was in the best interest of the U.S. is patently laughable. Saddam Hussein was Israel's mortal and capable enemy who for years attempted to obtain the means to annihilate Israel. For Jews not to seize on the opportunity to promote his demise would be, from their standpoint, arguably insane. Many of the actions that Jewish interests took to promote war with Saddam Hussein are a matter of public record - they have nothing at all to do with a secret conspiracy - they were done openly. The only real issue is what is to be done concerning a group that inordinately influences U.S. foreign policy to their agenda. Of course anyone who thus believes will be automatically and harshly denounced as anti-Semitic - a very convenient way of marginalizing all who have concern with Jewish/Israeli actions that are arguably antithetical to U.S. interests.

Mark

June 17th, 2009
11:06 PM

The article is egregiously self-serving, as Cohen was a supporter of the Iraq War. To refer to the Cheney/Bush and Blair Administrations' collective conniving as conspiracy rather than thoroughly revealed fact just covers his own misguided tracks while conveniently effacing the truth. As for what qualifies as a "conspiracy theory," no doubt much of what is dismissed as misguided foolishness has basis in reality; the labyrinthine plot in the basement of Reagan's WHite House to supply Iran with weapons and arrange for the CIA to run drugs in order to raise money with which to arm the Contras in Nicaragua sounds like a far-fetched and utterly absurd fantasy if not for the fact that it had been revealed to be absolutely true. The array of inexplicable deaths associated with the Kennedy assassination (after the event) was no febrile fantasy in the mind of Oliver Stone but rather well documented fact. And the official explanation of the enormous edifice of WTC 7 collapsing due to several small fires is beyond ridiculous. Some conspiracy theories strike me as wrong-headed while others are entirely plausible. Grouping them all together is intellectually dishonest and in its own way oddly naive.

Anonymous

June 17th, 2009
2:06 PM

The article confuses conspiracy theories with actual theories, based on sound evidence, on how governments and other powerful and interested parties, like corporations, shape world events. The former require a belief in improbable backroom plotting, while the latter rely on demonstrable facts and plausible explanations on how the powerful seek to use their considerable influence to create their preferred outcomes. It is not necessary for those in power to conspire when they have similar aims. They need not even communicate with one another. Those who stand to benefit most from imperialism and capitalism simply work in parallel.

Corvus

June 16th, 2009
10:06 PM

I guess I'm another nut case for believing that these documented cases indicate any sort of pattern on the part of governments - although they are only a few examples among many: Operation Northwoods: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf The "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments:" www.tuskegee.edu/global/story.asp?s=1207586 Govt. nuclear test endangers unwitting "downwinders:" http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/nucleartestingandth... CIA tests LSD on unknowing subjects: www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081130/NEWS/811300299 CIA works to remove democratically elected leader of Chile: www.fas.org/irp/world/chile/allende.htm

rick

June 16th, 2009
2:06 PM

Well, speaking of conspiracies, I have it from a completely unreliable source that the reason that Obama won't release the torture photos, and especially Sen. Lieberman's efforts to retroactively avoid the FOIA requirements, is because the photos show known Mossad agents assisting in the torture of Muslim detainees. If the Israeli involvement were to become public knowledge in the Middle East, it would further inflame the hostilities and potentially harm Israel's and NOT the US' national security.

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