Conspiracy theory
> You ask whether control or communication societies will lead to forms of resisÂtance
> that might reopen the way for a communism understood as the “transversal
> organization of free individuals.” Maybe, I don’t know. But it would be nothing to do
> with minorities speaking out. Maybe speech and communication have been
> corrupted. They’re thoroughly perÂmeated by money—and not by accident but by
> their very nature. We’ve got to hijack speech. Creating has always been something
> difÂferent from communicating. The key thing may be to create vacuoles of
> noncommunication, circuit breakers, so we can elude control.
>
>
>
> It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of
> rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.
>
>
There’s an unfortunate tendency (I blame that old reactionary Chomsky) to think that power functions only by supressing the flow of information, and so that there is something inherently revolutionary about communicating something which is (or which you think is) being hidden by those in power. One place this shows up is Indymedia, where a number of posters think that, by endlessly repeating conspiracy theories about 9/11 and, now, about the London bombings, they _must_ be doing something progressive. They’re wrong, unfortunately, because conspiracy theories are by their nature reactionary: they’re the last gasp of individualist, voluntarist attempts to understand something that could better be understood in material terms. Trying to discover the small group of individuals who are manipulating history distracts from attempts to understand the structural forces that constrain individuals; but also, because these conspiracy theories always depend on the existence a small powerful group _who are not us_ to manipulate the great majority of people, they are effectively an extended description of our own powerlessness.
The conspiracy theories which blame PNAC or the CIA for 9/11 are dumb (particularly the CIA one, given that the CIA has, insitutionally, been pretty hostile to the Bush doctrine). For the conspiracy theorist, however, both groups are too overt and too large to be the real conspirators; the logical tendency is to look for powers behind the throne (I’ve mentioned this before). This may be one reason why even comparatively moderate conspiracy theorists (who, say, believe that the US government blew up the Twin Towers, an a priori plausible idea stymied only by the complete lack of any evidence for it) tend to take their lead from the out and out nutters like Alex Jones. Unfortunately, it’s at this point, of looking for hidden powers, that the really nasty elements of conspiracy theory come to the surface. Alex Jones, for instance, doesn’t just believe that A long kiss goodnight is a secret prediction of 9/11 from the Illuminati, he also publishes a whole host of anti-semitic shit. The flipside of conspiracy theory is populism, and the populism of Alex Jones is of a particularly ugly sort.
Also on the fascism front, Infinite Thought linked to some great pictures of women in various Communist costumes, which unfortunately turned out to be on the website of wierd Russian fascists, the National Bolsheviks. They’re more disturbing, but also more interesting, than the conspiracy theorists. After Stalinism, I guess the construal of Soviet symbolism as uniquely Russian is not entirely unexpected; their manifesto, meanwhile, is very nasty indeed, calling for spilling blood for the nation and reviving the old fascist slogan, ‘long live death’. Their website also has examples of some of their posters, which range from the seductively anti-capitalist, to the overtly fascist, to the spectacularly insane.
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i broadly agree, except i can’t help but think there’s something strange about invoking the term “conspiracy theory.” whenever i say it, i feel complicit in the dismissal of thought somehow (sort of like “terrorism”), so often i feel inclined to NOT discuss it. firstly, i think it’s silly to say that so-called “conspiracy theories” are not true, and we are better advised to note that it doesn’t matter, since on an ethical level, history already teaches that the US government won’t hesitate to murder its own citizens. secondly, your argument is - i’m sure you know - the traditional stand on conspiracy theory as immobilizing and disempowering. but we need to be aware of how this assumption maps onto socio-economic realities, since, e.g. research in the black community has shown the opposite to be the truth. Waters, Anita M. Conspiracy Theories as Ethnosociologies: Explanation and Intention in African American Political Culture. Journal of Black Studies. September, 1997, 28, 1. pp. 112-125.
Comment by geo @ 8/6/2005 6:14 pm
wow, the NBP site is very worrying…
i first noticed their site about 5 years ago, but haven’t seen it since. i had assumed at the time that they were some crackpots with a website and little else. i realized, while looking at the pictures of the “combat girls,” that they actually appear to be a proper organization. this was corroborated by both the press they get (which, scarily, refers to them as “far left”) and the frequency and size of demos that they organize. wow.
i guess, given the socio-political history of the country, the attractiveness of a right-communist line shouldn’t be too surprising. as someone who tries to emphasize the legitimacy of homegrown political formations, this is certainly a painful limit-case (as it is much harder to find sympathy with these folks than it is for, say, communists who are merely authoritarian, not overtly fascistic).
Comment by geo @ 8/7/2005 1:34 am
If you have any bearing of the emerging global cleavage between muslim and non-muslim, you can see that US capitalims are once again trying to brigade the “free world” under it’s own hegemonic hub & spokes system. so we can see the motive as well as the structural necessity for US/UK capitalisms to emphasize the enemy status of oil producing and key Eurasian territories. OK. and now we have a mountain of evidence that all official versions of 9/11 fall apart like tofu pudding. OK. so what’s the problem? of course 9/11 has social as well as specific causes. no fucking contradiction whatsoever. none.
Comment by peter m @ 8/11/2005 9:09 pm
You stupid fucker. “Aren’t I cool linking to these babes of Marxist views???!!!!”
And you end up linking to neo-Nazis Your anti-Jewish views have been noted, and stink.
Comment by Antony Martens @ 8/11/2005 10:03 pm
Antony, you cock, what the fuck are you talking about? I don’t know that they’re strictly neo-Nazis; I would guess that, as Russian nationalists, they would be proud of Russia’s role in defeating Germany in WWII. Perhaps they have some way of combining that with support for Hitler, though. Because they clearly are fascists, and I’m well aware of that: the clue would be in me calling them ‘fascists’ and saying they were ‘very nasty’, right there in the post.
Comment by Tim @ 8/13/2005 1:22 am
The reconciliation with Germany is in fact one of the main ideological goals of the NBP. They’re trying to draw a picture of the Nazis having been driven against their “Russian brothers” by American/Jewish money. Historically, they focus on the Hitler-Stalin pact and the imaginable power of a totalitarian bloc including a German dominated Europe, Russia, and a Japanese dominated Asia. Functionally, they correctly identified the ideological recipe of the rivaling states they try to “reunite”: conspiracy theory. Reduction of the confusing modern world to a drama enacted by only a few persons; creating a never-ending state of alert against an enemy that will only stop being a threat when completely annihilated.
Though the the NBP isn’t as present in the public as they were five years ago, their influence especially on young Russians is still alarming. They managed to have the most popular Russian punk band and wide parts of other subculture scenes on their side. On the other hand, one of their leading thinkers rose to be one of the President’s advisors.
Comment by Classless Kulla @ 8/13/2005 7:31 pm
Thanks for that, that’s very interesting. Good links on your blog, too.
Comment by Tim @ 8/13/2005 8:41 pm
I see the comrades have put you on their shit list, Tim. Too bad. However, even from an ideologically correct point of view, without incurring even the faintest smidgen of a suspicion that you might be being led by deviant unconscious sex impulses to dabble in fascist slime, you are permitted to read Kevin Coogan’s “Dreamer Of The Day” (Autonomedia, 1999).
Comment by Rowan Berkeley @ 8/17/2005 3:26 pm
Come to think of it, you can read a review of it here:
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Yockey.html
which will give you the general idea.
After all, there might not be time to read the whole book before your 3 a.m. knock on the door comes …
Comment by Rowan Berkeley @ 8/17/2005 3:47 pm