What If the “Crazy” Ones Are Right? - Conspiracy Theories

Some people allege that the politicians, bureaucrats and corporate elite that make up the ruling class are conspiring to enrich themselves, gain more power, and transform society into a totalitarian dystopia. From assassinations to false flags, cognitive warfare to the rigging of elections, engineered pandemics to manufactured economic and social crises, there is little they won’t do to achieve their nefarious ends. But to make such assertions is to be branded a conspiracy theorist. And conspiracy theorists are mentally unhinged, paranoid, and deluded, and we should ignore their claims as we would the ravings of a mad man – or so we are conditioned to believe. In this video, relying on the book Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith, we explore why a blanket rejection of conspiracy theories is naïve and why our freedom is contingent on more of us being open minded to the possibility that conspiracies among the ruling class are a prime factor contributing to the downfall of the West. As the historian Kathryn Olmstead explains “A conspiracy occurs when two or more people collude to abuse power or break the law. A conspiracy theory is a proposal about a conspiracy that may or may not be true; it has not yet been proven. ” While conspiracies are as old as civilization itself, the term conspiracy theory only gained popularity in the second half of the 20th century. The way this term made it into popular discourse was through a 1960s CIA propaganda campaign. The CIA was concerned about the growing distrust surrounding the US government’s investigation into the John F. Kennedy assassination. The Warren Commission, which was tasked by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate this crime, came out with their report in 1964, and it concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Many Americans found the Commission’s conclusions to be unrealistic and the report to be full of flaws. Or as deHaven-Smith writes: “Americans are not crazy to want answers when a president is assassinated by a lone gunman with mediocre shooting skills who manages to get off several lucky shots with an old bull-action carbine that has a misaligned scope. Why would there not be doubts when an alleged assassin is apprehended, publicly claims he is just a patsy, is interrogated for two days but no one makes a recording or even takes notes, and he is then shot to death at point-blank range when in police custody at police headquarters? ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America The Warren Commission’s inability to satisfy the American public’s demand for answers led independent investigators to develop their own theories about what happened to JFK. Some suggested possible involvement by the man who perhaps gained most from the assassination, namely JFK’s vice president Lyndon Johnson, who took over the presidency following JFK’s death. CIA complicity in the crime was also widely speculated about. The CIA decided they needed to act lest these theories gain too much traction and cause a serious collapse in government trust. In January 1967 they initiated a propaganda campaign targeting those who questioned the government narrative. One part of this campaign, which was revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request, was Dispatch 1035-960. This Dispatch, which was distributed to CIA field offices across the globe, contained the instructions to “destroy it when no longer needed”. And as deHaven-Smith explains: “Essentially, Dispatch 1035-960 instructed CIA agents to contact journalists and opinion leaders in their locales about critics of the Warren Commission; ask for their assistance in countering the influence of “conspiracy theorists” who were publishing “conspiracy theories” that blamed top leaders in the U. S. for Kennedy’s death; and urge their media contacts to criticize such theories and those who embraced them for aiding Communists in the Cold War, trying to get attention, seeking to profit financially from the Kennedy tragedy, and refusing to consider all the facts. ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America The effort to discredit critics of the official account of the JFK assassination proved effective largely because it introduced a new group label into American political discourse. Individuals who questioned the establishment’s narrative were categorized as “conspiracy theorists” and with the help of the media, politicians, and members of academia this group was branded with increasing pejorative labels, they were called paranoid, mentally unwell, crazy, fringe, extremists, crackpots, and fanatics. And as deHaven-Smith explains: “The CIA propaganda program was designed to interject a new group into the pantheon of political groups Americans employ to pigeonhole political candidates, issues, movements, and so on. In this case, the group was called “conspiracy theorists,” and its beliefs were described abstractly as “conspiracy theories” about the

assassination of President Kennedy. However, like the other group labels in American politics, the conspiracy-theory label was (and is) sufficiently vague and general to be applied to many other events, issues, and individuals in addition to the assassination of President Kennedy. ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America The stigmatization of conspiracy theorists through government propaganda and other covert actions continues to this day. For example, the American legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who was Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, wrote a paper in 2008, co-authored by Harvard legal scholar Adrian Vermeule, which explores various methods for discrediting conspiracy theorists. The method they propose government use is called cognitive infiltration or as they write: “our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories. ” (Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, “Conspiracy Theories”) Cognitive infiltration involves government agents, or private agents acting on the government’s behalf, infiltrating groups that spread conspiracy theories and attempting to fracture their unity and undermine their theories. Or as Sunstein and Vermeule explain, cognitive infiltration occurs when “government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) … undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to [conspiracy] theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. ” (Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, “Conspiracy Theories”) Cognitive infiltration is reminiscent of the FBI’s illegal Counterintelligence Program that operated covertly from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. This program involved the FBI targeting political groups they saw as subversive, such as civil rights and antiwar groups, placing them under surveillance, infiltrating them and attempting to disrupt their functioning. Cognitive infiltration is a form of cognitive warfare that intelligence agencies have long utilized to control narratives and to thwart the spread of information that is disruptive to the goals of the ruling class. Sunstein and Vermeule’s promotion of this theory is merely an academic attempt to justify the state’s control of its citizens’ minds, or as deHaven-Smith writes: “... there is something very hypocritical about those who want to fix people who do not share their opinions. Sunstein and Vermeule say conspiracy believers need to have their discussions disrupted, because they are dangerous. But what could be more dangerous than thinking it is acceptable to mess with someone else’s thoughts? Sunstein and Vermeule’s hypocrisy is breathtaking. They would have government conspiring against citizens who voice suspicions about government conspiracies, which is to say they would have government do precisely what they want citizens to stop saying government does. How do Harvard law professors become snared in such Orwellian logic? ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America Even if it is acknowledged that it was government propaganda that turned the conspiracy theory label into a pejorative term, and even if we believe cognitive warfare is being used to discredit conspiracy theorists, perhaps the government is right to act in this way. Maybe the ruling class of Western democracies largely obey the law and perhaps the public needs to be protected from the dangerous ideas of the conspiracy theorists. But this overlooks the fact that political conspiracies do occur. For example, there was the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s where officials in the Nixon administration conspired to rig the 1972 election. There was Iran-Contra in the 1980s in which members of Reagan’s White house illegally sold arms to Iran and then channeled the money to a rebel army in Nicaragua. More recently the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully misled Congress and the American public about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify a war. But in the minds of those who reject conspiracy theories the fact that these political crimes have been exposed may be interpreted as evidence against speculative and unproven conspiracy theories. For one could claim that even if the ruling class commits a major crime, it can’t be kept secret for long. Investigations by the agencies tasked with maintaining law and order would discover these crimes, or whistleblowers would make them public knowledge. deHaven-Smith describes this rebuttal of conspiracy theories in the following passage: “But of course those who use the conspiracy-theory label as a putdown to dismiss suspicions of political skulduggery know that political conspiracies sometimes do occur. They are aware of Watergate, Iran-contra, and Iraq-gate, but they argue that official exposure of these scandals proves that secrets in the United States cannot be kept and plots in high office will always be found out... ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America This defense of the ruling class overlooks the fact that governments are provably capable of keeping secrets. A prime example is the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. This project involved thousands of people and took years to complete but only became public

knowledge after the first bomb was dropped on Japan. A more recent example relates to the Epstein files. The US government has kept secret the names of many of those involved with Epstein and the true extent of his crimes, even though numerous agents in the FBI, Justice Department, and other government officials have had access to the unredacted documents. “Clearly, when the US government wants to keep its capability secret,” writes deHaven-Smith “it can do so even when the secret must be harboured by many people and multiple agencies. ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America But even if conspiracies can be kept secret and even if the ruling class commits crimes that we never learn of, is it really something to be outraged about? Are the conspiracies that the ruling class takes part in really affecting our day-to-day lives? And furthermore, if society were truly sliding into a totalitarian dystopia, as some conspiracy theorists claim, wouldn’t the evidence be unmistakable and visible to everyone? But there is an alternative point of view. Perhaps modern ruling elites have learned that openly trying to control all of society, as past totalitarians did, is counterproductive. It is better to offer the illusion of freedom and to use conspiracies to place the chains of servitude around a population. Or as deHaven Smith writes: “…the truth is that events and information vary greatly in their importance, and hence a more or less totalitarian system can be achieved with a bare minimum of government intrigue and propaganda if the political apparatus and specifically the organs of manipulation are focused on society’s key levers and chokepoints. This might be called “smart” or “selective” totalitarianism. In such a system, the government rarely intervenes into domestic or international affairs for domestic effect, but when it does, it orchestrates hugely important events that set the frame for policy and politics for years or even decades to come. ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America If it is accepted that political conspiracies occur and that keeping them secret is possible, then the real reason why so much effort is put into discrediting conspiracy theories comes to light. It is not done to protect people from falling down rabbit holes of misinformation or to prevent an unjustified collapse in government trust. Instead, it is done to protect the criminals in positions of high power. “A conspiracy theory directs suspicion at officials who benefit from political crimes and tragedies,” writes deHaven-Smith. “The theories are considered dangerous not because they are obviously false, but because, viewed objectively and without deference to U. S. political officials and institutions, they are often quite plausible. ” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America A willingness to evaluate the evidence supporting a conspiracy theory is not a sign that we are crazy or paranoid, it is connected to reality and not deluded by statist propaganda. In fact, it was an openness to the possibility of political conspiracies that led to the creation of one of the greatest countries in history. The founders of the United States of America rebelled against British rule because they recognized, as is documented in the Declaration of Independence, that King George was conspiring to place the colonies in the chains of tyranny. Or as deHaven-Smith writes: “Those who now dismiss conspiracy theories as groundless paranoia have apparently forgotten that the United States was founded on a conspiracy theory. The Declaration of Independence claimed that “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations” by King George proved the king was plotting to establish “an absolute tyranny over these states. ”... Among the complaints listed are onerous taxation, fomenting slave rebellions and Indian uprisings, taxation without representation, and indifference to the colonies’ complaints. The document’s signers claimed it was this “design to reduce them under absolute despotism,” not any or all of the abuses themselves, that gave them the right and the duty “to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. ”” Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America If we continue to fall victim to the propaganda that manipulates us into dismissing conspiracy theories, then we risk falling further into the chains of tyrannical rule that the American founders fought against. We make it easier for the corrupt elements of the ruling class to commit crimes that lead to their enrichment and our impoverishment, as well as to their empowerment and our enslavement. This doesn’t mean that we should be naïve and believe all conspiracy theories, as many are false and some act as decoys to distract us from the theories more likely to be true. Rather we need to be vigilant and to recognize that power corrupts and that corrupt rulers commit crimes to further their agendas. Further Readings