Monday, November 11, 2013

The Importance of Conspiracy Theories

One of the most important phenomena in the modern Middle East is that of the conspiracy theory. It has been a hugely destructive force in the political life of the Arabs: it has prevented their political maturation and has inflicted their societies with a culture of violence. Conspiracy theories are not, of course, native or exclusive to the Middle East and are widespread in the West. The JFK assassination and the moon landing are two of the most ranted-about events: others include Roswell, NM; "chem-trails"; "lizard people"; "9/11 was an inside job!"; the Fed's noxious influence over the U.S. and its policies; and there have even been conspiracy theories about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. This but scrapes the tip of the iceberg, and to wade through conspiracist websites is to wade through a sewer of fevered imaginations, of obsessed people connecting dots that should be disparate foci, of unserious thinking and, in many cases, the daddy of all conspiracy theories: anti-Semitism (including, very prominently, Holocaust denial). I once read somewhere that "the conspiracy theory is the crutch of the ignorant." With a quick Google search, I was unable to find the origin of this quote, but regardless, it is true. For the conspiracy theorist, things are never what they seem and the simple answer is never the right one. It is the direct opposite of Occam's razor: rather, the more convoluted the story, the more sinister the imagined machinations, the more players supposedly involved, the more Rube Goldberg-esque it is, the more LIKELY that it is the truth. The conspiracy theorist is impervious to rationality or to logic, or to cold, hard facts; everything that you throw at them is just a smoke-screen. You're just plugged into the Matrix, you don't "get it," their facts are the only correct ones, you are either poor and misguided or, worse, in on the conspiracy yourself. Many people believe in at least some conspiracy theories, but they are most prominent on the fringes of the political spectrum (at least in the U.S.). This is not surprising because two of the most conspiracy-minded movements of them all were the Soviets and the Nazis.

It is also no coincidence that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were two of the most murderous regimes in history. When one believes in conspiracies against them, one lashes out at the "author" of the "conspiracies." It's a no-holds barred, all out fight against the enemy, who tries to wiggle and obfuscate, but is ultimately the source of all evil. In the early history of the Soviet Union, this noxious enemy was the kulak, the supposed wealthy peasant who exploited the lesser peasants and laughed all the way to the bank. The kulak was largely an imaginary phantasm of the fever-brained leaders of the Soviet Union. the kulaks were determined to exploit the peasants, come what may, and they sought to sabotage the Soviet system at every opportunity to hang on to their power. The word "kulak" became an infinitely elastic term under which anyone could be thrown into imprisonment or outright murdered. If your neighbor did not like you, he could denounce you as a kulak and have you taken care of. In the face of this insane policy, many people were indeed motivated against the Soviet system, so the Soviet accusation of the alleged kulaks' sabotage became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Millions of "kulaks" were deported to Siberia and/or killed.

The Nazis hated a lot of people, but as everyone knows the focus of their hatred was the Jews. In the imaginations of Adolf Hitler, his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, and Nazi "chief philosopher" (and ridiculous crank) Alfred Rosenberg, the Jew was indeed behind everything that ailed the world: Bolshevism and Marxism of any stripe, capitalism, the immorality of modern society (including jazz, "degenerate" art, and so on), democracy, and so on. Hitler did not espouse anti-Semitism to attract popularity; rather, many were discomfited by the anti-Semitic Nazi message. The Nazis were elected in large numbers in the elections of June 1932 not because of their anti-Semitism but because they were seen as a party that would uphold German values and morality in the face of Communism and the despised Weimar Republic. They would unite Germany as one, strong Volksgemeinschaft that would overturn Weimar and the "Diktat of Versailles" and redress the supposed "stab in the back" that "occurred" in November 1918. Hitler and many of his top minions (particularly the aforementioned Goebbels, Rosenberg, as well as Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler) deeply and seriously believed in a Jewish-led conspiracy to undermine the German nation. In their imaginations, the Jews controlled the US and Britain as the puppeteers of international finance capitalism; and the Jews also were the true power behind the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union. Because of the absurdity of this notion, many failed to take Hitler seriously. Look at this crazed Austrian corporal and his nonsensical ranting. What a joke! Well, obviously, it was not a joke, and the conspiratorial mindset of Hitler, many of the top Nazis, and many within the SS and the German military helped lead to the onset of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

The Nazis were not in it for the money (although they did loot, especially Rosenberg and Hitler's second-in-command Hermann Goering, and they did steal businesses from Jews and the belongings of Jews after they had murdered them). The Nazis were very serious about reordering the racial map of a Europe under their domination, and the Jews had to go first. Not all of this was due to conspiracy theorizing, of course; there was a fervent belief in Lebensraum (living space) and it was to be in the East, which was rich in the production of agricultural commodities. This was an absurd Weltanschauung, perhaps, but was not in and of itself a conspiracy theory. But Hitler's fixed obsession with the destroying the Soviet Union (which made its invasion by Germany all but inevitable under a Hitler regime) and his murderous anti-Semitism certainly added to the bloodiness of Nazi terror. How could millions of innocent people be murdered, their only crime being a Jew? Because it was firmly believed that the Jews were doing their damnedest to destroy Germany; they needed to be destroyed first, and they needed to be destroyed completely. In the culmination of this Nazi logic, Himmler stated that the children needed to be murdered as well because otherwise they would avenge their fathers when they grew up. Better to take care of them now.

These are just two examples of conspiracy theories taken to a gruesome conclusion. Conspiracy theories go way back, of course. Look at the "blood libel": Jews were accused of killing Christian children and draining their blood for the purpose of baking Passover matzo. This was firmly believed. This initially European notion spread to the Middle East in 1840 when a Christian monk disappeared in Damascus and that city's Jews were blamed for it. It was, however, a strictly Christian notion until the 20th century, when references to the blood libel began cropping up in Muslim scholarship. Books on the noxious influence of the Jews, including the blood libel, are prominent in bookshops in Cairo and Damascus, among other cities (I can attest to personally seeing blatantly anti-Semitic books in the windows of bookshops in Damascus), as well as in Arabic media.

The blood libel is not the only conspiracy peddled in a conspiracy-obsessed Middle East. The Israelis poison wells and pass out gum that causes cancer and AIDS. In fact, the AIDS virus was purposefully invented by Israel to weaken the Arabs. The Israelis are always (and I mean ALWAYS) seeking a way to bring down the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The Arabic media is OBSESSED with this notion; there was a point where I would read at least one article about this supposed conspiracy to destroy Al-Aqsa every single week in Al Jazeera. Of course, if you very seriously believe that your enemy is out to destroy one of your holiest and most important places, you are not going to be very motivated to discuss peace with your enemy. And if you believe that the Jewish Temple is a fairy tale concocted by the Zionist Conspiracy, or that if it existed, it did so in Nablus (as Arafat maintained), you have zero reason to feel that you should negotiate over the status of Jerusalem. What can the Western Wall possibly mean to Jews if there was no Temple in Jerusalem? Many Muslims maintain this notion, and say that the wall is where Muhammad tied his winged steed Al-Buraq. All the Jewish ties to the site are untrue, they maintain. So if the Jews are mere interlopers, with no ties to Palestine or to Jerusalem, why negotiate with them? The only reason the Jews are able to control their territory is because the Zionist lobby controls foreign media and governments, poisons the Palestinians with cancer, AIDS, and toxins, they train sharks to kill tourists to ruin the Egyptian economy, etc, etc. Who would want to negotiate with such an enemy? If an enemy were so nefarious, so malevolent, so evil, how could you possibly peacefully coexist? It also serves as a convenient alibi; everything is the fault of your enemy. Your lousy economy, your domestic political foes, and so on, are all the enemy's fault, and not your own. There is no need for introspection, at all. This is, um, not good.

While there have of course been real conspiracies in history, the deeply embedded proclivity to engage in conspiracy theorizing in the Middle East is a truly disturbing reality, with an exceptionally dreadful history.



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