PHONETOGRAPHY

Posters at Main Station

I think most of us know a couple people who carry what could be called a “conspiratorial world view.”  This can mean a lot of things: anything from the tinfoil-hat wearing caricatures who know that the government is watching them from inside their own blood, to the followers and copycats of the prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.  I’m not going to attempt to disprove conspiracy theory - that would be an exercise in futility (not unlike trying to disprove God to the devout).  Instead, I’m going to address a few reasons why conspiracy theory is irrelevant and unnecessary.

1) There’s already more than enough proof against the bad guys.
A year and a half ago I saw Naomi Klein give a talk about her book, The Shock Doctrine (which I still haven’t read, as much as I mean to).  In the Q&A period that followed, someone brought up the “9/11 Truth Movement,” which centers around the idea that 9/11 was an “inside job” orchestrated by or with the knowledge of the American government.  Her response was something to the effect of “I can’t prove that the Bush administration killed three thousand Americans by destroying the twin towers.  I can prove that they have killed over a million Iraqis as a result of the war they illegally brought to that country.  (See also the Lancet surveys.)  If that isn’t enough to ‘wake up’ Americans, nothing is.”

Bang.  If our goal is to prove that Bush and Co. are murderous and power-hungry, anything more than that should be unnecessary.  If we really wanted to get our hands dirty, we could bring up the USA PATRIOT Act, wire-tapping, the approval of torture, Guantanamo Bay, and any number of other crimes against humanity.  All of these have been heavily reported (in the mainstream media, no less), are easy to access, and are undeniable as fact.  The leaders are bad guys.  (I realize that this particular point is less relevant now that Obama is in power, but I am taking a “wait and see” approach.  For what it’s worth, the new crew is made up of more than few folks with some blood on their hands as well.  And, obviously, Obama himself is “centre-right” at the least.)

2) Our power as individuals is limited.
If global affairs are in fact being run by a shadowy group with an overarching plan for human civilisation (let’s call it the “New World Order”) - a plan that has been unfolding for literally hundreds of years - then there is nothing that we can do about it.  We have no access to the king-makers, nor to their sources of funding, nor to their secret planning meetings.  For all intents and purposes, trying to stop them would be like trying to kill God.

3) Our actions remain the same.
For those of us who want to build a better world, there are only certain actions that we can take at an individual level.  As it happens, these actions remain unchanged regardless of how much we know about any conspiracy theory.

If we seek independence, we organize and build alternative structures that operate without government or without multinational corporations (which are much bigger fish than government these days).  We grow our own food, in our backyards or on our balconies or in community gardens.  We start to break away from the grid by installing photovoltaic solar panels and micro-wind turbines and composting toilets and grey-water recycling systems.  We buy what we can from local sources.  We disrupt business-as-usual through street rallies, protests, and other direct action, until our grievances are heard and dealt with on a larger scale.  In short, we build resilient communities and render existing power structures irrelevant.  Working within the current structure is also useful, of course.  It’s undeniable that having Obama as President is far better than McCain would be.

None of these actions are easy or necessarily pleasant, and many of them are met with resistance.  This resistance exists regardless of whether any conspiracy theory is true.  People in power want to keep it.  That’s a truism.  You don’t need a global conspiracy to prove that.  Is the New World Order at work in Zimbabwe?  Or in Burma?  Or in any number of other tiny resourceless countries ruled with an iron fist?  To the people struggling on the ground, it’s irrelevant - their methods of resistance remain the same.

4) The learning curve is too steep.
In order to truly understand the depth of the machinations of the New World Order (or the Illuminati, or the Reptilians, or whatever), one must plunge themselves into a world of misinformation, black-background websites, over-the-top rhetoric, and obscure factoids.  JFK’s “conspiracy speech,” Bush Senior’s single reference to a “New World Order” (note the scary music at that link), and other fragments become essential touchstones.  Scraps of information from disparate sources are pieced together to form an “irrefutable” patchwork.

The problem, of course, is separating the wheat from the chaff.  One theory is absurd (and is therefore either the work of a lunatic, or a plant from the malevolent group itself), another is more plausible.  The writers who try to keep themselves factually grounded use the same fiery language as those who are clearly unhinged.  One photo renders a sympathetic interpretation and is published widely - another confuses or contradicts that interpretation, but is harder to find.

I’ll admit that this point is more of a complaint against conspiracy theory in general, rather than a reason why it’s useless, but I include it as a kind of corollary to my first point.  Developing a nuanced idea of a global conspiracy is difficult (if it’s possible at all), and it takes a great deal of dedication in comparing information, sifting through nonsense, watching video clips, etc.

Compare this to reading a single book by Klein or Chomsky, both of whom cite their sources very heavily, and draw the damning facts primarily from mainstream media sources, press releases and memos, official speeches, and freedom of information requests.  I’m not suggesting that the mainstream media doesn’t lie or omit information - it does - but in this case it gives any admission of guilt more weight, not less.  I’m also not saying that Klein or Chomsky are gospel - only that they are far more accessible (and fact-based) than conspiracy theory, and that they have at least as much power to radicalize.

The world is in a very rough state of affairs, that much is clear.  There’s no sense in cluttering up the view with shadowy global groups when the facts in front of us push us in the same direction.  What’s more, you’ll have better luck convincing others when you can point to a solid stack of info.  This is good, because we need all the help we can get.