Jonathan Kay -- Among the Truthers: a journey through America\'s growing conspiracist underground
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Viewed negatively, "Among the truthers" is a screed against Truthers
and other conspiracists.  Viewed more positively, it is an argument
for more civility and reason in our public discourse, and it is an
exercise in debunking, uncovering, exposing, and clarifying
conspiracy theories, urban myths and legends, etc.

Kay also attempts to explain why, 400 years into the age of reason,
we have we have a market place of ideas with such an extreme
balkanization of ideologies, theories, etc.  It's an attempt to
answer the question: How did we get to a place where true is so
relative, in particular, relative to where you are on the political
spectrum, the religious spectrum, etc.

In one sense, what Kay's arguments are obvious, because behind the
Truther movement is the preposterous belief that U.S. government
assassinated over 3,000 of its own citizens.  One of Kay's goals is
to show how believers can be ration and intelligent and come to also
believe that they have a "truth" that others are too blind to see.

The list of Truther beliefs is rather long, but there is a smaller
common set: (1) Dick Cheney planned the attack.  (2) Osama bin Laden
and the hijackers were patsies of the U.S. government.  (3) NORAD
was made to intentionally stand down 9/11.  (4) Pre-planted
demolitions brought down the World Trade Center buildings.  Etc.

We need to ask whether abnormal, conspiracy theories can come from
normal minds?  Perhaps they can.  Or, perhaps it's more likely that
normal minds can be lead along to consider a conspiracy theory.
But, Kay's book seems to suggest that the real believers, the ones
who spend inordinate amounts of time researching and promoting a
(conspiracy) theory, really are special.

And, in support of that, Kay gives example portraits of a few
believers.

A central belief -- A small group within the U.S. government wanted
to energize (or distract, or misdirect, etc.) the country, and
plotted 9/11 to do so.

The paranoid mindset -- For example, a willingness to believe that
your government is trying to use terrorism, staged acts, crimes,
etc. to fool and control citizens and to gain their support.  A good
deal of "Among the truthers" is devoted to describing and giving
examples of this type and their activities.

Kay analyzes hyper-rationalism and the willingness to construct and
believe artificially complex narratives and explanations, especially
those backed by (pseudo-) scientific explanations -- If you have
people who are motivated strongly enough to find and give seemingly
scientific and rational explanations for a theory about some event,
it is impossible to defeat that explanation.  A willingness and
desire to believe will carry a believer a long way against almost
any disproofs and arguments.  A conspiracy theory find most purchase
where and when there are people who want to believe.

Kay gives some background -- What energizes conspiracy movements?
What makes these movements possible?  (1) Humans are predisposed to
seek an explanation for events.  And, they are also predisposed to
look for and to use an agent in that explanation. (2) In Europe,
conspiracy theories were informed by fascism and Marxism. (3) In the
U.S., Christian conservative conspiracy theories and apocalyptic
millennialism shape some of our conspiracy explanations. (4) In the
U.S., the belief in individualism and the power of the individual
combined with an extreme concentration of wealth and power, fuels a
tendency to believe in plots and conspiracies as explanations for
drastic events. (5) Political populisms in the U.S. tends to foment
belief in an evil force or organization behind unwanted events, e.g.
a secret society, an organized religion, a racial group, a secret
business society, etc.  (6) There is a tendency to re-interpret
events using a narrative that contradicts the official explanation.

There are conspiracy believers on both the right and the left:
lefties worry about the CIA or some other secret government
organization; those on the right obsess about the United Nations,
the European Union, an international court, etc.  But, the
conspiracy theories are remarkably similar.  Of course, where ever
you are on the spectrum and whatever your beliefs, *yours* are going
to be the *true* ones.

And, there are some events that we, most of us, some of us, cannot
leave alone.  We simply *must* have an explanation that is more than
the most obvious or most direct one.  There *must* be a better
explanation than that a single, deranged gunman kill John F.
Kennedy.  There *must* have been a larger and more devious evil
behind the 9/11 attacks.

There is a tendency among conspiracists to attribute multiple evils
to a single, secret source.  Once you start down this kind of rabbit
hole, many strange theories and ideas come to seem reasonable and
even attractive.

Many conspiracists feel that they do not need to explain what really
happened, since they have done such a good job of explaining how the
official explanation is problematic.

Specific conspiracy theories -- Here are some of the conspiracy
theories you will learn about from "Among the truthers": (1) The
protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: a plot to take over and
control gentiles.  (2) Conspiracy theories that blame the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission,
or a Dick Cheney led neocon Star Chamber.  (3) Right wing
conservatives' belief in a diabolical plot behind the campaign to
reduce global warming.  (4) The larger plot behind the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.

Conspiracies and the media -- Now we have so many channels and
choices in the news that we listen to that we can choose our own
reality, that is, the reality that is described and reported to us.
That means that the actual world that we see and experience may not
be at all consistent with the "reality" we have chosen on the news
media.  At the very least, it can differ wildly from the "official"
version of events.  That makes it likely that many of us will begin
to doubt what is being reported to us by the normal or conventional
media, that is, what is reported as the "official" version of
reality.  Effectively, we can each choose a personal, trusted, or
more sizzling vision or explanation of our world, and we come to be
suspicious about all the other versions.  In particular, the main
stream media come to be seen as being in cahoots with the military
industrial complex, the financial community on Wall Street, the
wealthy elite, or a secret, master government agency.

Since the Internet can be seen as giving a megaphone and a printing
press into almost anybody, Kay describes the Internet as
"democratizing conspiracy".  This was one of the chapters that
fascinated me the most, because it is an attempt to describe how the
Internet and email and the Web facilitate and encourage conspiracy
theories and their propagation.  When almost everyone can do
research on their favorite conspiracy using a Web browser and a Web search
engine, when almost everyone can "broadcast" their ideas, theories
and arguments using email and Web forums and a personal Blog, you
have a huge facilitator and a big magnifier effect.

False flag theories -- There is a long history of government plans
to stage events that can be blamed on an enemy and used as a pretext
for aggressive action.  These lead naturally to a theory that 9/11
was staged to provide an excuse for invading Iraq.  For Truthers,
9/11 was the "new Pearl Harbor", i.e. they cast it as an event that
was consciously arranged as part of a plot to provide an excuse for
war.

Birthers and Tea Partiers -- The Birther movement can be seen as an
attempt to drive U.S. voters toward the far right.  (1) Tea Partiers
are populists maybe, but many or even most are educated desk
workers, not manual laborers, much less farm workers.  And (2) Tea
Party people do not want capitalism controlled as did earlier
populists; they mostly believe in deregulated, free market
capitalism.  The Tea Party line on Obama: He is a socialist who is
trying to expand government; he hates capitalism; and he is
deliberately trying to destroy America's position as a superpower.
The Tea Party is filled with Birthers, anti-environmentalists, free
market capitalism believers, small government and no-taxer fanatics,
fervent Christian religious believers, etc.  And, it does contain a
conspiracy fringe, radical activists who really do believe that they
are locked in a struggle against malign despotism.  A Christian
evangelical flavor is common.  As is railing against tyranny,
especially the leftist, big government kind.  The Tea Party combines
extreme libertarianism with social conservatism.

Where does the Tea Party extremism come from and why?  (1) It's fed
when our belief in the freedom of the individual comes up against the
constraints, rules, and restrictions of modern, highly organized
society and government.  (2) It's fueled by the frustration of
living in a society where there are such extremes of wealth.  And,
don't forget, the right wing and Tea Party's answer to those extreme
differences in wealth is lower taxes.

But, a large proportion of Americans both (1) believe in smaller
government and (2) favor big government programs such as Medicare,
Social Security, unemployment insurance, etc.  So, the division and
conflict is not just between those on the left and those on the
right; it is within our own conflicted minds.

Kay also discusses deconstructionism, Paul Mann, Jacques Derrida,
etc.  These each can be seen to be a gateway to and enabler for
undermining objective meaning and replacing more standard
explanations with conspiracy theories.  In some sense, they provide
academic support for efforts to describe the world in the ways a
conspiracist might want to view it.  They justify and rationalize
holding beliefs that are not supported by empirical evidence.  As if
that were needed, since on the Web you can find "evidence" for
anything you want.

For another discussion of this subject and the 9/11 Truther
conspiracy theory in particular, and one that is both insightful and
entertaining, see "The great derangement", by Matt Taibbi.

10/10/2014

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