Kathy Olmsted, a professor in our department, gave a talk yesterday on her new book, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, WWI to 9/11. I have been fortunate enough to take one of Kathy’s seminars when she was about to complete the book, and finding it intriguing, decided to attend.
After sitting down, I noticed a rugged old man in the front row sitting right next to Kathy, who was still waiting for everyone to wander in. He asked her if she would be distributing copies of her book to people “who study this stuff,” and her hesitant and somewhat confused reply of “yes,” indicated that she was picking up on what was readily apparent – that the old man was a conspiracy theorist, and was there to offer his “expertise” on the topic.
“Well, you’ll want one of these then,” he said gruffly, handing over what looked to be a thick packet, typed in small font and lacking any other feature. It was extraordinary how, as soon as this man opened his mouth, you could tell by his determined tone, sprinkled with a definite sense of hostility, that he was one of the theorists. And then I sat there wondering why it didn’t occur to me, when I decided to attend, that these people would show up. Of course they would.
Kathy went on to give her very engaging talk on her research and how it came about. She argued that as the government grew bigger and more powerful – starting specifically after WWI – the emergence of real conspiracies fed into what paranoid style already existed in American life.* Her focus, however, is not on which conspiracy theories are real and which ones aren’t, although of course that plays into her analysis of where various theories come from, but on how these theories arise in a social and political context, and what feeds them and keeps them alive even when further documentary evidence for them is not forthcoming.
This was a point the conspiracy theorists in attendance could not grasp. The first few questions consisted of their attempts to barrage Kathy into engaging in the question, “Yes, but is it true?!” One fellow started out with what seemed like might be a more interesting question about the Gulf of Tonkin initiative and then in an unorganized manner descended into demanding that Kathy answer the question of whether a bowling ball falls faster when dropped into water than when dropped into air; this somehow related to the Twin Towers and how of course, they couldn’t have possibly fallen on their own accord.
Every scholarly person in attendance was uncomfortable by the insistence of these people (or, I am guessing, maybe it was just me) especially as they had a tendency to talk much louder than seemed necessary in the very small space we were all huddled into. The graduate student sitting next to me attempted a scholarly question to save Kathy from the onslaught; after much thinking about what I could ask I stumbled upon an actually decent question and did the same.** Kathy called on us eagerly, probably desperate for a substantial question rather than, “No really, seriously, which one would fall faster?”
What the conspiracy theorists couldn’t understand, even though Kathy explained it to them very clearly at least three times, is that the truth of the various conspiracies was not her primary concern. As a scholar (“I am an academic, not an activist” she said at one point) she looks at the popularity of conspiracy theories as a social phenomena with social and political roots. Yes, some of those roots have to do with the fact that there have been many real conspiracies – she offered Watergate, Iran-Contra and the CIA’s experiments in drugging random people as examples – and this thus feeds into people’s distrust of government. But she is asking what are, in fact, larger questions; how does the resulting paranoia, which can go overboard to the point of not trusting the government to do anything at all, effect American democracy and American politics? How has this changed over time?
These are historians’ questions, not conspiracy theorists’. To them, the only question is “is it true?,” and the only explanation for their interest and the existence of the theories is, “they are true, and we are seekers and warriors in the name of truth.” But beyond the fact that they couldn’t get Kathy pulled into a debate about the falling speeds of bowling balls, I think there is another reason why the conspiracy theorists in attendance seemed annoyed with Kathy’s approach to the topic. When someone finds themselves, or some aspect of their identity, being analyzed objectively as the product of larger forces in society, they feel threatened. Most of us go about assuming that we believe what we believe because it is true – not also because we grew up under certain economic or political circumstances and, not because we are influenced by such impersonal forces such as the media, propaganda, or ideology. If you were to explain to a New Righter in his mid fifties or sixties, for example, that his backlash against the supposedly all powerful sixties counter-culture was not something particular to his genius but a wide spread phenomena, manipulated by politicians like Nixon and Reagan and perpetuated through an army of Right wing pundits who distort the truth and make half-baked, but pleasant sounding arguments on the airwaves and radio waves, his response would probably not be positive. Laypeople are not in the habit of considering the content of their minds and lives as shaped by a context, and they don’t like to think they have been influenced or duped into the conclusions they have come to.*** They are matters of objective truth – so who cares what the “social causes” of conspiracy theories are – that’s a stupid question to a conspiracy theorist, who of course would answer that question by saying, “the cause of conspiracy theories is the truth!”
I’ve been educated enough, with postmodern ideas especially helpful, not to be too bothered by the idea that I, too, am a product of my time and place in society. On the contrary, my awareness of this, I would like to think, will keep me from ever ending up like one of those conspiracy theorists, totally uninterested in examining my beliefs from a different angle. Because the oddest thing about the theorists in attendance – who all seemed, by the way, to cluster directly around me so that when they spoke, I could feel the vibrations of their obstinacy in my ears – is that I am not sure they were aware of just how out of it and possessed they seemed to all us moderate folk around them. They have tunnel vision, and driving them forward to their one conclusion is a sense of identity that they’ve probably come to rely on much more than they realize. Constantly searching for conspiracies in the government, they have ceased to look within themselves at all, and consequently lack the self-analysis that is really vital to living an authentically intellectual life. In other words, in my mind, the best sort of thinker is the one that understands the self as just as susceptible to the follies of the world as the exterior phenomenon it attempts to understand.
But don’t tell that to the conspiracy theorists – it has nothing to do with whether or not steel can actually melt. Melt, people, melt. Now that’s the real question, here.
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* Olmsted uses as a sort of starting point Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics, also a personal favorite of mine.
** My question was whether attraction to conspiracy theories differs across race, demography, or political affiliation. African Americans, Kathy told me, are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and it’s not hard to gather why; there is no difference in gender; the demography I think was left unanswered; and as for political affiliation, moderates are less likely, but extremists on either political spectrum are more so; and ironically, that means that a lot of conspiracy theorists agree on their theories but politically, little else.
*** I want to be clear here that I am by no means positing that all belief can be attributed to social conditioning. I would certainly hope, for example, that my belief that evolution does indeed account for the diversity of species on earth or, even that Obama is an improvement over Bush, are based on rational grounds which are not merely subject to my socio-economic position. However, I do not feel I need to be bothered by those aspects of my values and beliefs which are influenced by or, are a product of my place and time in society. For example, the fact that evolution is scientific fact does not necessarily account for my passionate annoyance with those who are intent on denying that – for explaining that, you have to understand my position as an unusually educated member of American society who considers a quality intellectual life as vital to the health of any culture. Yes, I could make rational arguments for that as well – but I won’t deny the role that my particular and personal circumstances play in my conviction on these points. But that by no means delegitimizes them or, saps them of all meaning; it helps me understand my motives and why I care about what I care about, and allows me to argue, honestly and without dogma, for them in the public sphere.
