Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics
Very few notions nowadays generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical importance or efficacy of political conspiracies. Even when this belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence and hedged about with all sorts of qualifications, apparently it still manages to transcend the boundaries of acceptable discourse and to violate unspoken academic taboos. The idea that particular groups of people meet together secretly or in private to plan various courses of action, and that some of these plans actually exert a significant influence on particular historical developments, is typically rejected out of hand and assumed to be the figment of a paranoid imagination.
Most academic researchers clearly prefer to ignore the implications of conspiratorial politics altogether rather than deal directly with such controversial matters. A number of complex cultural and historical factors contribute to this reflexive and unwarranted reaction, but it is perhaps most often the direct result of a simple failure to distinguish between ‘conspiracy theories’ in the strict sense of the term, which are essentially elaborate fables even though they may well be based on kernels of truth, and the activities of actual clandestine and covert political groups, which are a common feature of modern politics. For this and other reasons, serious research into genuine conspiratorial networks has at worst been suppressed, as a rule discouraged, and at best looked on with condescension by the academic community. An entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics has thus been consistently neglected. ...
If certain parties were to say, for example, that a secret Masonic lodge in Italy had infiltrated all of the state’s security agencies and was involved in promoting or at least exploiting acts of neo-fascist terrorism in order to help condition the political system and strengthen its own influence in the corridors of government, most readers would probably assume that that they were joking or accuse them of having taken leave of their senses. Twenty-five years ago this author might have had the very same reaction. Nevertheless, although the above statement greatly oversimplifies a far more complex pattern of interaction between the public and private spheres, not to mention between visible political institutions (‘the overground’ or ‘the Establishment’) and covert political groups (‘the underground’), such a lodge did in fact exist. It was known as Loggia Massonica Propaganda Due (P2), was affiliated with the Grand Orient branch of Italian Freemasonry, and was headed by a former Fascist militiaman named Licio Gelli.
I can recall reading about the various scandalous Italian conspiracies in The Economist in the early Eighties. Most enlightening.
(By the way, beginning one minute after I put up this post about "Propaganda Due" I've been flooded with spam comments in Italian offering genuine Gucci and Prada merchandise. Coincidence? You be the judge.)
Likewise, if someone were to claim that an Afrikaner secret society founded in the early decades of this century had played a key role in promoting the system of apartheid in South Africa, and in the process helped to ensure the preservation of ultraconservative Afrikaner cultural values and Afrikaner political dominance until the early 1990s, some readers would undoubtedly believe that that person was exaggerating. Yet this organization also existed. It was known as the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), and it formed a powerful ‘state within a state’ in that country by virtue, among other things, of its exercise of covert influence over elements of the security services.
I hadn't heard of that before.
Here's a theory I just made up: these kind of deep state conspiratorial organizations are related in some sense to the relatively early retirement ages for soldiers and cops. Lots of colonels and police lieutenants get pensioned off while still in vigorous middle age, so in some countries they are enthusiastic about continuing to toil with their former colleagues as planners and organizers (i.e., conspirators).
Here's a theory I just made up: these kind of deep state conspiratorial organizations are related in some sense to the relatively early retirement ages for soldiers and cops. Lots of colonels and police lieutenants get pensioned off while still in vigorous middle age, so in some countries they are enthusiastic about continuing to toil with their former colleagues as planners and organizers (i.e., conspirators).
Bale goes on to explain that academics pay very little attention to such matters, while investigative reporters love this kind of stuff. So, this knowledge exists in a twilight world that screenwriters go nuts over, but doesn't seem respectable to enlightened opinion.
This leads to academic histories missing big chunks of the story. For example, Project Ultra, the giant WWII British codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park, which employed 9,000 people at one site by war's end, remained virtually unknown until 1974 (although traces of the story began appearing in the press from 1967 onward). I can recall it being a very big deal when it was revealed 29 years after the war ended. Was this hubbub due to the Watergate Era's hunger for conspiracy theories? Probably, but I wouldn't be surprised if journalists hadn't been telling each other about it in smoky bars for 29 years too, so they were well past primed to jump in when the official shackles were lifted in 1974.
In hindsight, I've noticed that Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's official history of the Navy in WWII from the 1950s and 1960s contains a passage where he more or less taunts the reader to guess that the Allies had inside information on what the German U-boats were up to, but apparently nobody much noticed at the time.
Similarly, if you read newspapers and magazines closely, the whole NSA spying thing (which is a continuation of sorts of Ultra) was old news. Back in the day, the president of France was always denouncing the "Anglo-Saxon powers" and their perfidious Echelon for listening in on his phone calls.
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72 comments:
Lemme go way out on a limb here and guess that Komment Kobtrol is gonna frown on the idea of anyone mentioning that great big 800 lb guerilla of a mother-of-all-possible-conspiracies conspiracy theory?
Cause I'm getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from all the posts that I type up which never see the light of day in these parts.
OT, but good news from Australia.
Australian elites are warming to the idea that aboriginal violence is most likely a pre-colonial phenomenon that is exacerbated by access to alcohol.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/lack-of-action-on-harmful-use-of-alcohol-in-indigenous-communities
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/aboriginal-violence/4588638
The violent crime rate differential between non-aboriginals and aboriginals is even greater than the black-white gap.
"The rate of Indigenous imprisonment is nearly
eighteen times that of non-Indigenous Australians — six times larger than
the disparity between African-American and white imprisonment rates in the
United States (Guerino, Harrison & Sabol 2011, p. 27)."
--Don Weatherburn
So conspiracies are real, but only right wing white people engage in them.
OT:
There's video out of a Kansas City cop killing a drunken firefighter in self defense under circumstances very similar to Zimmerman/Trayvon case-- laying prone on one's back and being pummeled from above. Pay no mind to the filmers, an annoying chick and drama-queen gay, who neglected over the course of several minutes to help/call for help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itPY54C_guM
"Lemme go way out on a limb here and guess that Komment Kobtrol is gonna frown on the idea of anyone mentioning that great big 800 lb guerilla of a mother-of-all-possible-conspiracies conspiracy theory?
Cause I'm getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from all the posts that I type up which never see the light of day in these parts."
Given the things Sailer lets through, I bet there's more to it than that.
Besides, there's ample documentation of Jewish control of the media (newspaper, TV, movies) and heavy influence in finance and academia, so it's not too hard. Even Jon Stewart (Leibovitz) mentions it in his America book.
"Operation Snow" and Pearl Harbor. A Soviet conspiracy to convince the Japanese to attack South in 1941 instead of North into Siberia. It actually does a better job explaining US actions in the fall of 1941 than conventional histories.
I think scholars disparage conspiracies for two reasons: first, they make their job harder. They are used to filling the books with "what one clerk said to another" or what went into official memorandums.
Second, academics have a hard time imagining people unlike themselves: i.e. people so devoted to a cause that they forgo attention and work well with others.
Part of the problem is that it's hard to believe that these idiots would have the wherewithal to tie their own shoelaces, let alone run a conspiracy. I find it's easier to think of it as an ecosystem, with players mostly working a short term, more personal agenda, than some major Conspiracy.
The old Inbetweeners joke about how "it's more like having a pet than a friend" to describe one particularly obtuse character seems apt. I make no claims to being bright (just as well, amirite?) but my gawd, there's no way these people could (1) run a successful conspiracy and (2) shut up about it. Ecosystem it is, then.
There's also a somewhat nasty tendency to want to distance ourselves from, well, those people. Not just the white omega males in tinfoil hats stereotype, but also all those coloured people desperately scrabbling for reasons why they can't run a decent country. There's always something going on, and it's not like the people who are attracted to politics wouldn't be so uncouth as to work behind the scenes (which, anyway, can be perfectly legitimate). It's just that it always smacks of people not willing to face up to either their own inadequacy, or that of their ideology.
Why do academics ignore conspiracies? Maybe it's because a competent conspiracy doesn't leave any records for academics to study. Simple as that.
If in 1939-41 someone had suggested that British intelligence was conducting a huge covert operation on US soil against antiwar American politicians, businessmen and journalists, with the blessing of the Roosevelt administration and the FBI, doubtless they too would have been labeled a crazed fantasist. Yet that's exactly what was happening (the British Security Coordination as it become known).
I'd say the differerence between some "conspiracy theories" and the truth is a few decades.
Middle America Iowa
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/hillary-clinton-iowa-gop-2016-election-poll-104621.html
The biggest most successsful most brazen and most ambitious deep state conspiracy of recent years - which also happens to be undoubtedly true - you can actually read the conspirators bragging about their clandestine activities in mass market daily papers, happens to be Britain's disasterous New Labour maladministration's secret abolishing of all immigration controls back in the 2000s.
Of course, the real, nefarious and unstated purpose of the deluge was to ensure perpetual, permanent, automatic inbuilt labour party rule in the UK and not economic or cultural as often claimed. The policy has worked like a charm. In a generations time labour's enemy the tories will never ever be in a position to win an election again and will wither into extinction. The sheer scale of demographic change and immigrants monolithic support for labour will definitely ensure one party labour rule. UK elections are hardly ever settled by huge landslide majorities. The immigrant vote is crucial and game changing.
http://qz.com/187390/chinas-ambassador-thinks-house-of-cards-embodies-dcs-corrupt-politics-but-not-beijings/
Anonydroid at 2:56 AM said: Cause I'm getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from all the posts that I type up which never see the light of day in these parts.
Hunsdon said: Maybe it's you.
Founders conspired but Americans are hopeless idealists.
Watergate was a conspiracy.
But Jews and Libs hate conspiracy theories because so many were and could be directed at them from the right.
"I can recall reading about the various scandalous Italian conspiracies in The Economist in the early Eighties. Most enlightening."
Steve, I can recall you scoffing at the idea Amanda Knox was guilty, and how right you were. Italy has a very very different legal system. The Ecomomist seems to interpret the court cases against Andreotti in parochial fashion, and as if they had occured in the US or Britain. There was nothing in all that P2 and mafia stuff, nothing at all. In 2012 Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official were sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila.
Speaking of conspiracies.
There's the strange and unresolved case of Boston Bomber Brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev's pal Ibragim Todashev. He's the Chechen who left that FBI interview in his Florida apartment via body bag, with seven additional holes. Immediately after confessing to committing the 9/11/2011 Boston drug-dealer triple murder with Tamerlan.
Reporter Susan Zalkind has been tracking down Todashev's friends in Florida. Some seem sketchy, others not. The FBI has gone to great lengths to deport all of them. In some cases, the catalyst for getting the boot was, Talking To The Press.
After nearly a year, the FBI is maintaining its silence on the peculiar circumstances of Todashev's confession/homicide. Steve has discussed this case repeatedly, e.g. here.
The highly PC radio show "This American Life" devoted its March 7, 2014 episode to Zalkind's investigations of Todashev's associates. Synopsis and audio here.
Interesting listening.
Anybody remember the Illuminati card game?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game)
When I was a teen constructing a conspiracy between incompatible organizations or even groups that hate each other to control the world seemed impossible so I thought it was a joke. The foolishness of youth.
Don't know who this guy is (maybe there's a conspiracy there) but its nonsense.
For example the World is about to commemorate the assassination of the Archduke by Gavrilo Princip, which 100% of academics do believe was part of a conspiracy.
Its interesting that you're writing this 2 days before the ides of March, Steve. Expecting anything?
Interesting how academia seems to be so wary of conspiracy theories, seeing as how academic politics are often extremely conspiratorial. A good example is Freud's Inner Circle or Secret Committee:
"Freud's inner circle or Secret Committee consisted of Sigmund Freud's most trusted psychoanalysts.
It was set up in 1912–13 to ensure the future of psychoanalysis, in response to several analysts breaking with his theories including Alfred Adler in 1911 and Wilhelm Stekel in 1912, and the threatened departure of Carl Jung.[1]
Ernest Jones recommended to Freud that he should create a group of loyal psychoanalysts, who would privately discuss any question of departure from "any of the fundamental tenets of psychoanalytical theory" before acting at all.[2] The group initially consisted of five members, Jones, Sandor Ferenczi, Otto Rank, Hanns Sachs, and Karl Abraham, all of whom were given a golden ring: Max Eitingon was added to the Committee in 1919.[3]
Freud and Jones had recognised "a boyish perhaps a romantic element too in this conception".[4] later historians have suggested that it was equally a shrewd, partisan move on Jones's part,[5] helping to further isolate Jung, and thus to ensure his own position as the only Gentile in Freud's inner circle.[6]
Later developments[edit]
The Committee functioned well for a full decade, despite a world war, but dissension involving Rank and Ferenczi led to its dissolution in 1924.[7]
It was reconstituted the same year, and resumed the practice of sending circular letters, but with Anna Freud replacing Rank.[8]
Lacan would later pay a tribute to Jones as "the last survivor of those to whom the seven rings of the master were given and who attested...that they were not reserved simply for bearers of relics"." (WIKIPEDIA)
I think that this denial reflex is largely a result of the positivist strain in academic thinking. To admit that conspiracies have existed and have influenced historical events creates a conflict with the ideology that the grand sweep of history is entirely determined by larger forces than individual human efforts (guns, germs, and steel!!??).
There's still an argument among classical historians about whether the first-ever recorded conspiracy, the "Cataline Conspiracy", actually occurred or was a fiction created by another, "real" conspiracy, involving Cicero and a cabal of powerful Senators, who set out to destroy the political careers of Catline and his followers, e.g., Julius Caesar.
Conspiracy against the Republic was not a crime at the time and Cicero essentially invented the legal concept and word ("con" + "spirare" = to breathe as one) in order to prosecute the conspirators.
It's interesting how in this case it's literally impossible for historians to avoid acknowledging that, no matter which side you come down on, there actually had to have been a historically significant conspiracy driving the late history of Republican Rome.
I thank Mr. Sailer for sound advice on how win over Jews and win favor.
I return the advice in good faith.
I think Mr. Sailer should post articles praising Israel, and maybe NY Times or CBS hire him as pundit.
Work for both of us.
http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=David-Yeagley&lc=4996&pid=170140975&mid=5890270
As an Afrikaner I immediately thought of the Broederbond even before the writer mentioned it. An uncle of mine was a member as well as a fairly prominent academic. Its leadership mostly consisted of academics with a cultural bent: theologians, historians, sociologists and such. I don't think the military and police figured much at all, except perhaps as ordinary members.
Interestingly, when the Broederbond proposed apartheid in the 1920's it was considered a very liberal idea - almost nobody back then thought that blacks were capable of or had any intrinsic right to self rule. Through my uncle I also gathered that the Boeders had been working behind the scenes since the early seventies to move the country away from apartheid. For instance, they had Samuel Huntington over to advise the government at one stage in the late seventies.
The main difference between the real conspiracies and the paranoid fantasies is that the real ones can be, and eventually are, tied to real actually existing nameable people. I don't reject the idea of your 800 lb gorilla, but I'd like you to name some names.
The third and final book of the "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" series was about deep state conspiracy. The author, Stieg Larsson, was a journalist and that had been his special area of interest. As Andreas von Bulow, the German former minister who doesn't believe the 9/11 official story, said of intelligence agencies, "90% of what they do is create false leads."
The US government officially concluded, via it's appointed investigative committee, that 9-11 was the result of a conspiracy; a group of Arabs under the direction of bin Laden secretly conspired to perpetuate the attacks. Also, there was the Lincoln conspiracy in which some participants were hanged. Thus, conspiracies do exist; the US government says so. One reason many people are skittish about the subject is the question about where the trail might lead and what groups might be implicated. Arabs are ok targets along with Confederate sympathizers and anybody else who happens to be the Nazi-of-the-month. Narratives must be controlled and conspiracy theories are too much of a wild card. No telling in what direction they'll go.
Sailer's Russian Strategy doing wonders for Putin. Putin as favored and protected by the Jewish community as Sailer is.
Wait, is Steve ignoring the ethnic angle?
My impression is that in Italy (and probably elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and no doubt in the lands of Men With Gold Chains), most people generally (justifiably) assume that there is always some degree of back-room scheming going on.
Is frowning on conspiracies neo-Puritan and/or anti-anti-Semitic?
The real conspiracy is the consolidation of Anglo-Amarican-Jewish Elite powers.
They got everything they want, now what?
except we can't post much here about the most important conspiracy.
Enquiring minds want to know what Echelon* did with that conversation between Rachel and Trayvon.
*Echelon-- a French word!
It's funny how much the French use the term "Anglo-Saxon" to describe everything from the US and UK as powers, to globalization, capitalism, communitarianism, and libertarianism. Its telling how they to this day remain obsessed with the "Anglo-Saxon" as a cultural enemy in was that they aren't with anyone else.
In their defense, it does show how they are more accurate than many about how certain cultural and economic strains do indeed have a particular Anglo-American lineage, as opposed to the more generic "white" or "European". Let's face it, there's a lot-both good and bad- that is Anglo-American in nature that has no parallel with France, the Mediterranean, Germany, or the Nordic countries.
Did anyone see the list of institutional supporters for the new shiny Ukrainian PM/President Open Ukraine Foundation? German Marshall Plan (shady Mittel Europan foundation).
Chatham House. That's actually the bloody Queen. I've always thought the assassination of Rasputin was the BMI's most unjustified and spectacular assassination. That's British Military Intelligence. Oswald Rayner is not a household name, even though he shot Rasputin straight through the forehead killing him instantly. Instead everyone knows the legend of poisoned cupcakes, drowning, beating etc.
It is a Hollywood Legend straight from MGM studios.
Would it make you libertarian's happier to know that the Tsarina was a coke head barbiturate user? Or that Nicholas II injected cocaine and smoked weed? The Tsarina was also addicted to Heroin? That's a conspiracy of silence. How can one be a despotic ruler while high high high?
The only conspiracy out there that counts is the conspiracy of big capital to control the world and there is nothing secret about it. You can read about most of it every day in the pages and statistics of Investor's Business Daily.
It wasn't just Morison. In Herman Wouk's THE WINDS OF WAR, published in 1971, in the portion when the "present day" Pug Henry is commenting on the Battle of Atlantic, he all but says "it'll still be a secret for a few more years, but we had a decisive breakthrough in reading German signals...but I better not talk too much about it."
I get the feeling that for some years before the ULTRA secret came out in 1974, knowledge of it was out of the bag among well-connected literati like Morison and Wouk, but they had too much honor to actually give full details.
Most of the really bad stuff that is happening is out in the open. The conspiracy between the Democrats and business to allow illegal immigration, for example. The ongoing collusion/corruption between DC and Wall St.
The intergenerational theft called entitlements.
The public employee unions.
The bribery and graft called campaign contributions.
Who needs the Iluminati?
It can't be that obscure -- I learned about the Broderbond from a wikipedia article on the 90s software/video-game maker Broderbund... Which reminds me, the front page of today's WSJ's B-section had another video game/regulatory conspiracy story too
*Echelon-- a French word!
Damn, maybe this conspiracy goes deeper than 1066
Is this Italian conspiracy a part of Operation Gladio?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
To the guy getting carpal tunnel syndrome I'd suggest he inquire with the health coverage provider contracted through his employer (presumably the ADL or the SPLC). Treatment for conditions brought on by spammy false-flag keyboard trollery is now the Law Of The Land in the year 5 A.O.
Why so little attention paid to conspiracy theories, our host (more or less) asked?
John Harrington's famous comment comes to mind. Slightly edited, it would read, "Conspiracy doth never prosper; what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it conspiracy."
Anonydroid at 9:38 AM said: Its telling how they to this day remain obsessed with the "Anglo-Saxon" as a cultural enemy in was that they aren't with anyone else.
Hunsdon said: A thousand years of enmity will do that to you.
constructing a conspiracy between incompatible organizations or even groups that hate each other to control the world seemed impossible so I thought it was a joke. The foolishness of youth.
Indeed. Not so long ago I would have thought the same but now the idea that the Sunni Arab kingdoms and their seeming alliance with Israel doesn't seem far fetched at all.
All politics is a conspiracy. I don't mean that as hyperbole it is literally true. It's almost all a small bunch of people sitting in a room discussing how to advance what they see as their interests. The public part all happens after.
.
"Here's a theory I just made up: these kind of deep state conspiratorial organizations are related in some sense to the relatively early retirement ages for soldiers and cops."
Highly plausible.
A riff on that is the different types of mentality that lead people into different lines of work.
Taking your political leaders from the security apparatus - like Putin for example - means you'll have people at the top whose mentality is completely rooted in security.
This might not be ideal in many ways but in some ways it will.
(Hence why everything Putin does makes sense - at least if you have that same type of mentality.)
Anybody remember the Illuminati card game?
Yes....
One of the useful things I learned from it is that while Conservative and Straight often overlap, they are not the same. Ditto with Liberal and Weird. Educrats, e.g., would be Liberal and Straight.
There should have been a card for the Alternative Right....
Hey, Steve:
David Remnick issues a ringing defense of Malcolm Gladwell:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116917/david-remnick-interview-russia-obama-and-editing-new-yorker
Stronger than I would have thought, but Gladwell probably helps sell magazines.
What did Putin do that made the MSM hate him so much?
Did he by any chance say that Ukrainians like to let the good times roll?
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116917/david-remnick-interview-russia-obama-and-editing-new-yorker
WOW, HOW WEIGHTY!
Confessions of...
By golly... St. Augustine, move aside.
off topic, but way back in 1957 or thereabouts, when Sputnik first launched, Brits colloquially referred to all satellites as "sputniks", even after the US launched theirs. I'd often wondered if there was an explicit BBC or government campaign of NOT using the Russian word, because it slowly fell out of use by the mid-60s.
For the last 40-odd years, BBC news has referred to rioters, of whom the UK has had plenty, as using "petrol bombs".
But ever since the Ukraine "demonstrations" began a few months back, the BBC has referred to "Molotov cocktails", a throwback to WWII.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/scholar-who-shaped-history/?insrc=hpss
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/11/news-from-space-exhibition/?insrc=wbll
Daaaaaaaaaaang!!
There's the strange and unresolved case of Boston Bomber Brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev's pal Ibragim Todashev.
Doubt that there's anything too 'Deep State' about this case. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the FBI agent who shot him was Jewish and simply lost his cool and killed in rage/revenge. All three of those deceased pot dealers in Boston were Jews.
Act of Killing. Shoah meets Hohn Waters.
Fascinating.
Legit criticism:
http://www.insideindonesia.org/weekly-articles/review-an-act-of-manipulation
The replacement of 'gauntlet' by 'gantlet' was a conspiracy.
Steve, have you followed the mystery of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight? They are now looking for wreckage at the Indian Ocean, and looking at a map of where it might be, it seems that there is a possibility it might have fallen in the Andaman Islands, home of one of the last uncivilized tribes in the world, the Sentinelese, and of which you wrote several articles some years ago.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=578733415556221&set=a.334377456658486.77858.334350269994538&type=1
feinstein's law of relativity
The real conspiracy involving Amanda Knox is the one that took control ofthe American media and made this obvious murderer seem angelic and innocent; a conspiracy which pulled strings to get the appeal judge replaced by a shameless hack who then acquitted the psychopath. Amanda Knox's parents are well connected and it is precisely her acquittal that shows how corrupt and disfunctional the Italian system is.
Academics are clearly part of the conspiracy.
Knox.
The Italians could not face the fact that a black boy raised and killed the Anglo-Indian Kercher lady.
The MLK worship is strong in the Italian legal system.
90% of the conspiracies you read about are tales spun and spread by intelligence agencies. Psy-ops to muddle the big picture.
Of course, conspiracies are real and plain to see after the facts.
Just now, the coup in Ukraine is a barely concealed conspiracy by the US State Dpt.
Academics prefer to write about the end of history or similar nonsense because it pays better and takes no research.
Anonydroid at 6:33 AM said: Anybody remember the Illuminati card game?
Hunsdon: yes, by STEVE Jackson Games. And here we are at STEVE Sailer's place. Coincidence? As Goldfinger said, once is accident, twice is circumstance, three times is enemy action.
Speaking as an academic: it's funny about academia rejecting conspiracy theories, considering the massive cultural Marxist conspiracy that dominates academic life in all but a few subjects.
The Italians could not face the fact that a black boy raped and killed the Anglo-Indian Kercher lady.
That he didnt do it alone. Though as far as I can tell the average punter isnt even aware of his existence.
And she wasnt Anglo-Indian, she was jewish-Indian.
Seems to to me a lot of people have their heads filled with CSI, Law & Order type nonsense where its perfectly plausible that two white middle class kids would conspire with a black illegal immigrant to murder another student.
Frankly Im amazed that any kind of case was even made against Knox.
"Steve, have you followed the mystery of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight?"
Methinks there is a bit of information that intelligence services know, but are not telling us (yet). Strange how in this technology advanced day, they do not know what happened officially. That false lead yesterday from the Chinese was especially odd.
Which conspiracy theory is the so-called 800 pound gorilla? Sure, some ideas spring to mind, but there's no one theory that clearly sticks out above the rest.
And it's kind of hard to believe that any mention of this conspiracy gets shot down by Komment Kontrol, since Sailer seems to be a pretty lenient moderator compared to most others.
Doesn't Journolist count as a conspiracy?
Reading about Propaganda Due and Borghese changed my outlook a good deal.
> A number of complex cultural and historical factors contribute to this reflexive and unwarranted reaction [against the concept of conspiracy]
lol
> Is this Italian conspiracy a part of Operation Gladio?
Yeah its highly likely to be related.
The background of the whole thing was the potential ascendency of 'eurocommunists' who claimed to be neutral between NATO and Moscow. They wanted to withdraw Italy from NATO. Any prospect of this actually taking place was apparently totally unacceptable to . . . whoever it is that has the prerogative to totally unaccept that sort of thing.
> Doesn't Journolist count as a conspiracy?
Natuerlich. I can't see what the counter-argument would be.
"Admiral Samuel Eliot Morsion"
This makes it perfectly clear that he was basically an academic historian who was given a naval rank after "his friend" FDR agreed to his proposal "to write the operational history of the US Navy [of the Second World War] from the inside, by taking part in operations and writing them up afterwards." His only real military service was as a private during the First World War, when he was a private and saw no overseas duty.
Morison was only raised to the rank of admiral after the war, clearly in honor of his contributions through his writings (whatever the official justification). It's misleading to call him an admiral as if he were the equivalent of a Farragut or a Nimitz.
Don't get me wrong. He clearly did see actual combat in the Pacific, and is entirely to be commended for risking his life to get an eyewitness's experience of what he was going to write about. Good on him! But he wasn't an admiral in any substantive sense of the word.
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