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