On secrecy and conspiracy theories

The 'leading think tank' Demos has released a paper [pdf] in which it is argued that secret services should become less secretive in order to combat wild conspiracy theories that serve as a 'radicalizing multiplier' in the world of violent or potentially violent millenarian Islamist sects in Britain today.

I'll resist the temptation to make a couple of the obvious cheap jokes at the expense of Demos because they are at least trying to address an issue that my experience as a teacher has led me to believe should be taken very seriously indeed.

Nevertheless, their report is unsuccessful because it does not address the central issue. Of course there is a relationship between the level of secrecy surrounding an organisation and conspiracy theories.

We've seen this since ancient times. For example, the early church celebrated the Eucharist with the 'love feast'; the bread and wine simply formed part of a larger meal to which all and sundry were invited.

But as Paul complained in his second letter to the Corinthian church, some were apt to drunken behaviour that was inappropriate for the solemnity required of the sacrament - so the custom developed for the Eucharist to be celebrated in private.

From here grew the wild stories where suspicion and hostility at exclusion eliminated any appreciation of symbolism or metaphor: they were literally eating flesh and blood.

Other examples illustrate the point while showing that the correlation is not always strictly proportional. Freemasonry is secretive and has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories but not to the same extent as Jews - who for the most part are exclusive only in the sense that they, uniquely amongst the monotheistic salvation religions, decline to proselytize.

Conspiracy theories, then, cannot be considered purely a function of secrecy so reducing it or eliminating it altogether is not going to solve the problem. In any event, there is obviously by definition a limit to which a secret service can be 'transparent'.

I'm not claiming to provide a satisfactory alternative; I only mean to restrict myself to the observation that if Demos' diagnosis is faulty, its proposed cure is unlikely to be successful. For example, the report says:

"More broadly, conspiracy theories drive a wedge of distrust between governments and particular communities. Conspiracy theories - such as those that claim 7/7 or 9/11 were ‘inside jobs’ - demolish the mutuality and trust that people have in institutions of government, with social and political ramifications that we still don't fully understand."

While conspiracy theories are bound to re-enforce this suspicion and division, I'd suggest that this is almost completely the wrong way round: the disposition to believe conspiracies is a symptom and not primarily a cause of the mistrust. How this should be addressed, I'm not competent to say but with regarding the belief in conspiracy theories as a phenomenon in their own right, I'd make the following observations drawn from my teaching experience and leave whatever relevance they might have outwith this narrow experience to others:

1) One should never ever engage with the details of an individual conspiracy theory because by doing so, one unavoidably surrenders part of what you claim - that while obviously conspiracies can and do occur, the conspiracy theory of society is intrinsically irrational. The problem with the Demos report is that it is a species of this mistake. It doesn't deal with each case but it does treat the problem of conspiracies as they relate to intelligence services, whereas the problem is deeper and wider than this.

2) The underlying hypothesis behind all conspiracy theories is essentially the same - and it is this that should be challenged. It is that a small clandestine group of malevolent and powerful people are manipulating global circumstances to their benefit. Apart from anything else, it is based on a fundamental misapprehension of how societies and economies work. Or to put it more plainly, the bigger the conspiracy, the more people have to be involved - which in turn increases the likelihood of said conspiracy being discovered. I dare say there may have been some conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. On the other hand, why hasn't the gunman from the grassy knoll been on Oprah yet? Those who deny a large number of people would be required to conduct a large conspiracy have moved into the realm where they impute superhuman powers of malevolence to the subjects of their conspiracies. Here some historical context might not go amiss - which brings me to the next point...

3) Karl Popper said that the conspiracy theory of society came from not believing in God and then asking, "What is in His place?". This is part of it - the religious mindset; whenever something happens, there must be some intelligence behind it. But this needs to be qualified: whenever something bad happens, there must be some malevolent intelligence behind it. It comes from not believing in the devil, and then asking, "What is in his place?" It's this propensity to demonise that has to be addressed. The imputation might be to MI5, or the CIA, or to George W Bush, or the state of Israel - but they follow a pattern set by the prototype conspiracy theory found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I don't know what to make of the fact that so many people don't seem to recognise this - although I'm sure there's a depressing lesson about the state of our historical education in there.

This is arguably the world's most resilient conspiracy theory. That it owes its origins to a Russian secret service plot is an irony which serves to demonstrate that the secrecy of secret services is an insufficient explanation for this ancient malady that seems to be increasingly afflicting the contemporary mind.

Being unfamiliar with this author...

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

...I would have no idea whether this is a good thing or not - but a surprisingly consistent result from this site.

Via: HC who got the same. Maybe it only gives one result - can someone else try it?

On being progressive

I can't be bothered with the word or people who use it to describe themselves for two reasons:

1) It is a term used by people who used to be left of centre, no longer are, but are rather reluctant to admit it. Rather than acknowledging they've moved further to the right in old age, they prefer to pretend that these concepts of left and right no longer have much meaning. "It's not me who has shifted - it's the world around me that has changed." Amongst the many shortcomings of this analysis, it strikes me as being rather egocentric.

2) As a consequence of 1), the term has become so elastic, it seems there is no meaning that it will not bear. This is certainly its fate in the hands of our Deputy Prime minister - here whining about the IFS's 'partial' study of the budget.

The thing is, when it comes to fiscal policy, the term is still useful because it has a very narrow meaning. If the proportionate burden of a tax increases as income rises, it is 'progressive'; if it does the opposite, it is 'regressive'. It's as simple as that. Unless you're Nick Clegg, that is - in which case the whole picture gets a little more confused.

So, if you watch the clip embedded in the beeb piece above, you'll hear him complaining about the failure to take account of the Coalition of the Self-Righteous' plans to get people off benefits [emphasis his].

It would - I think you'll agree - be difficult to take any survey that produced findings based on what a government planned to do seriously - especially when these plans include objectives that have had a history of failure when attempted by previous administrations. Governments are always promising to get people off benefits - but usually any explicit effort to do so has only succeeded in shifting people onto one form of state sponsored subsistence to another.

Two of the biggest examples in my life-time have been the withdrawal of unemployment benefit and income support from 16-18 year olds and the series of reforms under Major, which included the 'rebranding' of unemployment benefit as 'Jobseekers' and the new restrictions on people's eligibility to it. The result of the former was a huge increase in the staying-on rate in education and receipt of the EMA; the latter saw a colossal increase in invalidity and incapacity benefit claims.

The only real shift I have ever seen from 'welfare to work' has been as a result of old-fashioned economic growth. Here governments can do little except avoiding making things worse. Whether this one will pass this meagre test of competence remains to be seen but like many observers, I don't rate their chance of success particularly high. In the interregnum, they are planning yet another drive towards reinforcing the ideal of 'less eligibility'. In my opinion, this is bad enough in itself because it fails to acknowledge a simple reality: unemployment - and periodic high unemployment - is an intrinsic feature of a capitalist economy, simply because it has no mechanism to prevent it.

But what adds insult to injury is the way in which its advocates insist that this attempted return to the Victorian era should be described as 'progressive'. Why can this lot not just say that equality forms no part of their concept of 'fairness'? Arguing with enemies that attempt to obfuscate this, as Tim Montgomerie does here, is becoming a little tiresome. They should come out from the shadows of their own convoluted prose where their professed concern for 'fighting poverty' would be seen for the indifference and contempt that it actually is.

And finally...

...a bedtime story.

On bashing the Lib Dems

Jackie Ashley thinks it is a bad strategy. Lessons on strategy are a wee bit difficult to take from someone who was one of the key cheerleaders in the liberal press for Gordon Brown's bid for premiership. It also wouldn't do any harm to take account of the context in which the bashing is being done. For example, Ed Miliband was preaching to the faithful who - rightly, in my view - pretty much despise Nick Clegg.

In the same way, while gratuitous Liberal bashing might not be an entirely sensible electoral strategy (although might be more popular than some seem to think?), it is emotionally desirable. So I'm going to do some here - a context that doesn't have much to do with electoral considerations. Long way of introducing the following: wondering if anyone saw this from earlier this month?

"A real car crash of a press conference this morning from the Tories and the Lib Dems on their first joint party outing.

[...]

The most audacious line was from Huhne: "It gives me no satisfaction that Labour are not willing even to talk about tackling the deficit. But they know what we know: the unavoidable cuts that are coming are Labour cuts..."

Bad enough from anyone but as a number of people have already pointed out, Huhne has a background in economics. Wrote a business column in the Sindy and everything. We shouldn't be so beastly to such as these in case we might want to deal with them in the future? In this case, I'm with the tribalists.