Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Culture Wars And Craziness


The Occupy movement's evolving agenda is in danger of being sullied by association with neo-Nazi David Duke and antigovernment crusader Ron Paul.
Read it at AlterNet
How Right-Wing Libertarians, John Birchers and Conspiracy Freaks Are Trying to Hijack the Occupy Movement
by Eric Johnson

In my anecdotal experience this is not affecting only Occupy and the 99% movement. Quite a few people with whom I am acquainted, who I had thought were sane, are falling into this hole of dark fantasizing about conspiracy theory. For some it is an anxiety neurosis, but for others, often the leaders, it is a paranoid psychosis. But for many, it is only uncritical thinking that can be countered by introducing rigor.

A lot of this centers around the Fed and it related in some way to Ron Paul and Rockwell-Rothbard Libertarianism, based on the persistent conspiracy theory about and "international banking cabal" instituting a "new world order" based on a repressive "world government" under UN aegis — the Money Masters, Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations stuff that is supposedly controlled by "the Rothschilds." There is just enough fact to support the outlandish claims, so that uncritical minds make logical jumps that are unwarranted.

This quote from the article cited above sums it up.
For many of the people involved in the Occupy movement, this is their first involvement with political activism. Their openness to new ideas and reluctance to embrace any one political dogma is refreshing. But as the saying goes: “It’s good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”

2 comments:

Septeus7 said...

If I want evidence of a vast world wide criminal conspiracy for global control all have to do is open a history book on Anglo-American Colonialism or read William K. Black and Michael Hudson for the current conspiracies so no Illuminati is required for me to be a bit paranoid about the ruling class of idiots we currently live under.

Tom Hickey said...

The is a problem Septeus7. There is enough truth to this to make the conspiracy theory element look credible.

Conspiracy theories only get traction if there is a thread of evidence underlying them. There is plenty of good evidence here, but the conspiracy theories extrapolate it way too far. As I try to explain to some of my conspiracy theorist friends, the conspiracy theory is a a distraction from what is really important about the issue.

For example, holding wildly erroneous notions about central banking, fractional reserve banking, international banking cabals secretly manipulated by the Rothschilds, etc. just gets in the way of the actual issues, which are real and have been documented by people like Black and Hudson. Unfortunately, many people cannot make the distinction between evidence-based and fantasy spun from imagination that has no clear basis in fact.

The article I cited on conspiracy theory at Wikipedia is actually a good summary of the issues. It makes the point that a lot of people now are open to conspiracy theory since so many conspiracies have been caught out over the past several decades. So it is much simpler to build a credible case for the crazy in many cases than it probably would be otherwise.