Sorry for the delay on this. Let me know if this works for you.
Skepticism and
Conspiracy
It
is entirely appropriate that, in its role as a process by which to sift truth
from falsehood, skepticism has over time accumulated a body of "negative
knowledge" concerning specific claims that are either unproven or demonstrably
false. It is likewise reasonable that claims fundamentally related to other
assertions which have themselves never managed to pan out be dismissed without
investigation. One need only look into so many "inventions" making use of
healing crystals before dismissing each additional device, even if the latest
crystals are especially pretty or draw upon novel terminology in the course of
pursuing their mystical functions. And if one fellow asks me to spend a few
days watching him conjure a homunculi, I may dismiss the fellow with a clear
conscience, no homunculi ever having come about despite centuries of efforts
to that end and the very concept going against a great preponderance of
established science and even plain horse sense.
Let
us pretend for a moment, though, that we live in some alternative universe in
which the raising of homunculi not only refrains from violating any scientific
principles, but is also known to have been successfully achieved on some
occasions. In that case, I would be very much remiss in stating flatly that
the claimant is definitely incapable of producing a homunculi, such a thing
being possible and sometimes done in this universe, so more entertaining than
our own homunculi-free one in which we are forced to live. I need not accept
outright that he himself will be successful on this particular occasion, of
course, but to have an educated opinion on the matter, I would have to
investigate the fellow's record in homunculi birthing, while to be absolutely
certain one way or the other I would have to see the results for myself. In a
universe in which homunculi are known to be created, only a fool would run
around denouncing all claims of specific instances as absurd on their
face.
Back
in our own universe, there exists a situation comparable to the hypothetical
one described above, one which is unfortunately attached to some portion of
self-described skeptics, although not at all unique to it: the dismissing as
prima facie absurd all assertions that may themselves be characterized as
constituting a "conspiracy theory." Bearing as it does strong connotations
that do damage to its status as a useful concept, I will first take the
seemingly unnecessary step of noting that a conspiracy theory is merely an
assertion to the effect that two or more parties have collaborated with some
degree of secrecy to pursue a particular end. To the extent that we take the
language for what it means, then, and to the extent that we keep in mind the
obvious fact that two or more parties will indeed sometimes collaborate
outside of the general view in order to accomplish a shared goal, a conspiracy
theory describes any number of things that we know to occur and which the laws
of nature obviously do not prevent from occurring. Despite the demonstrable
truth of this description, a great deal of inattentive and sloppy thinking has
polluted the concept and in doing so done great damage to the ability of the
public and even many particularly intelligent individuals to make accurate
judgments about the workings of human society.
Sufficiently
pressed, an intelligent person would likely acknowledge that conspiracies are
not supernatural phantoms but are in fact part and parcel of everyday life. On
the playground, several girls quietly collude to spread rumors about another
for the purpose of defaming her amongst her classmates, even as they effect
friendship on the surface. Elsewhere, the executives of two firms providing
similar products meet in secret to fix their prices and thus avoid competition
that would cut into the profits of each. And in some or another failed state,
a dissenter who recently called for protests is arrested and charged with the
possession of narcotics that were placed on his person by police at the
direction of a tyrant who intends to remain one. The individual who comes to
suspect that any of these things occurred is a conspiracy theorist by
definition.
All
of these occurrences, I think, are so common and well-documented as to be
uncontroversial even among those who most ardently ridicule conspiracy
theories in general. But they might object, quite accurately, that the ranks
of conspiracy theorists also include those whose suspicions are incorrect;
they might note here, as they do elsewhere, that some of those who detect
conspiracies do so in manner that is unwarranted by the facts, linking
together aspects without care and tending to see some single force behind a
great number of things that may be more easily explained as unrelated
occurrences perpetrated without any clandestine direction. This is entirely
true as well, and certainly constitutes a good reason why one must be careful
when attempting to determine whether something has occurred with or without
the covert prompting of two or more parties.
Nonetheless,
these considerations do not provide a rationale for the haste with which many
otherwise intelligent people laugh off any assertion of a conspiracy that
extends beyond what I suppose is some uncertain barrier of normalcy, or which
happen to relate in some way to other assertions that are themselves clearly
untrue. The fellow who will readily concede that little girls and executives
and secret police will conspire in service to their shared goals will often
resist even a fundamentally comparable conspiracy if some form of it is
believed by any number of clearly deranged people, citing the apparent
wrongness of some in thinking a certain thing as evidence enough of the
wrongness of all who think something similar.
For
instance, suppose I told you that over a decade ago, intelligence operatives
of a certain world power perpetrated acts of terrorism against its own
citizens in order to provide a pretext for the desired invasion of a Central
Asian country while also facilitating further control of the state by the
faction then in charge. In fact, you need not suppose, as I have made this
assertion a number of times in print and on television. For a few weeks in
1999, Russian cities were devastated by a series of apartment bombings which
were promptly blamed on terrorists hailing from Chechnya, which was promptly
invaded. The final bombing attempt, which was conducted in the city of Ryazan
and which made use of the same sort of explosives as the others, was foiled
when citizens called police after seeing suspicious activity around a basement
apartment. The bomb was defused and examined by local police equipped for the
purpose, and thereafter three people were arrested - all of whom turned out to
be agents of the FSB, the post-Soviet KGB, and all of whom were released the
next day on orders from Moscow, which congratulated the city on having
succeeded in passing a drill. That the basement apartment in which the bomb
was planted had been rented months before the bombings had begun, and that the
bomb squad detected the same military-grade hexagan comprising the explosives
as had been used in the other bombings despite assurances from the national
government that it was merely sugar, would be suspicious on its own. That at
least two respected foreign journalists had warned of a government plot to
carry out false flag bombings well before the incident, and that former FSB
agent Alexander Litvinenko was among several who confirmed the same plot later
on (before himself being poisoned with polonium in London in a crime pursuant
to which the British authorities still seek the arrest of another FSB member,
incidentally) would certainly seem suspect as well, as would the rest of the
evidence that has been put forth by a number of parties since.
Of
course, it is possible that there are fine explanations for these and other
irregularities, including the later murders of several people who were
assigned by the Duma to investigate the matter. Let us say for the moment that
this is the case and that the bombings were in fact carried out by Chechnyans
without the participation of that FSB of which Putin was the director before
becoming a national hero during the grisly but wildly war that came next. Even
under such circumstances, we are faced with a dynamic that ought to be
troubling to all who shall admit at least that men will sometimes do great
evil and may even go so far as to lie about it: Despite the fact that this
case has been put forward by such people as David Satter of The Hudson
Institute and John Hopkins, and that my own account is cited in an upcoming
book by former CIA Directorate of Operations and author Barry Eisler, many
who've encountered our common position have rejected it as prima facie absurd
even before learning of the most basic evidence by which we have come to it. I
myself have conducted two written debates on the subject with colleagues who
seem to find it laughable that a Russian government might kill its own people
in order to achieve some political end. Both of these are intelligent men with
decades of work in investigative journalism to recommend them, yet neither saw
fit to learn even the basic facts of the case before coming to a firm
conclusion. And both made this decision based in large part on the fact that
there exist other people who ascribe to similar conspiracies that are likely
to be untrue.
Why
this is a problem should be evident in a world in which a great many parties
have lately conducted a great number of reprehensible actions that they
themselves now admit to - and which in many cases were laughed off as crazed
myth despite evidence that came about even prior to the revelations that they
were indeed fact. He who lives in such a world as ours - one in which
MK-ULTRA, COINTELPRO, Mockingbird, Operation Ajax, Operation Gladio, and a
myriad of other duplicitous and sometimes murderous undertakings have been
carried out and then cheerfully acknowledged, but whose reaction to claims of
further measures along these lines is not to examine the evidence but rather
to ridicule those who have is not a skeptic, but rather a pseudo-skeptic.
Skepticism, after all, is not the easy process of laughing off anything that
may be phrased in such a way as to sound bizarre; rather it is dedicated
examination of demonstrable facts coupled with dedicated adherence to
intellectual honesty. And to the extent that men take the satisfying route of
confirmation by avoidance, they facilitate a world in which a great deal of
evil may be perpetrated under a small degree of scrutiny. Liberty and decency
are the perpetual victims of such laziness.
--
Regards,
Barrett
Brown
512-560-2302