The Manchurian conspiracy. (Conspiracy theories do harm.)

[Hoping4Change]

Rick Salutin in the Globe & Mail writes

"Conspiracy theories aren't just wrong, they do harm. How? By obscuring the nature of the status quo. If it takes a devious conspiracy to put a sleeper in the White House, then the system must be basically sound and democratic."



"Conspiracy theories draw focus away from the normal processes that are the real means by which privately owned vice presidents and virtual corporate sleepers slip into power. Think of this as the conspiratorial purpose behind conspiracy theories.


"The point is not just that planting a sleeper in the White House to serve corporations would be superfluous. The point is they do plant presidents, but not through arcane plots."





http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040806/COSALU06/Comment/Idx

[Minstrel Boy]

1. The problem with that critique is that "conspiracy" is not an aberation

to the system, rather it is the system.

It's really about "deep politics", to use Dr Peter Dale Scott's term: a systemic, continuous set of illegal relationships between destructive private groups and public authority.

This is what the "respectable left" doesn't get. This is why they eschew "conspiracy theory," because they think it doesn't provide a critique of the system. But the term "conspiracy theory" is just a strawman for debunkers to debunk. What conspiracy facts reveal is actually the landscape of deep politics.

This is from the preface of Dr Scott's seminal Deep Politics and the Death of JFK:

"A deep political system or process is one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society. In popular terms, collusive secrecy and law-breaking are part of how the deep political system works.

"What makes these supplemental procedures "deep" is the fact that they are covert or suppressed, outside general awareness as well as outside acknowledged political processes. Sometimes the secret is an open one, as when a particular city knows that its cops are on the take, or a nation knows that its parties have found ways to completely thwart the intention of campaign-financing laws. But some secrets are more closely held.

...

"Deep political analysis focuses on the usually ignored mechanics of accommodation. From the viewpoint of conventional political science, law enforcement and the underworld are opposed to each other.... A deep political analysis notes that in practice these efforts at control lead to the use of criminal informants; and this practice, continued over a long period of time, turns informants into double agents with status within the police as well as the mob. The protection of informants and their crimes encourages favors, payoffs, and eventually systemic corruption. The phenomenon of "organized crime" arises: entire criminal structures that come to be tolerated by the police because of their usefulness in informing on lesser criminals. In time one may arrive at the kind of police-crime symbiosis familiar from Chicago, where the controlling hand may be more with the mob than with the police department it has now corrupted."

[ibegurpard]

3. EXCELLENT reply!

:thumbsup:

[glitch]

2. The Manchurian Candidate is not a conspiracy theory, it's fiction.

not quite the same thing. If he's saying fantasy can be a dangerous distraction from reality, well sure, sometimes.
I think the people who are always yelling 'conspiracy theory' are the ones that can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality - that's why they are the most threatened when someone questions their paradigm.
Just IMO.
But I do agree that corporations didn't need to implant chips in brains to gain all the power.

[htuttle]

4. I've heard it said...

...that humans living in a hierarchial power structure (as we do) have no trouble accepting a 'conspiracy' among their subordinates and peers. Most people could accept the possibility that a lot of the auto mechanics in town collude to raise the price of your bill (they probably don't, but some think they do). People will accept the possibility that employees 'collude against' the boss.

However, when it comes to the possibility that their bosses, and their bosses bosses, are colluding to screw them -- then you've crossed the line into 'conspiracy theory'.

A 'conspiracy' is by definition simply 2 or more people in the same business talking shop. Most people can't accept that those 'above' them in the social hierarchy actively collude against them, although that is demonstrably the case more often than not.

This is the programming Americans are given from the time we are children.