None Dare Call It...III Needful Things

Conspiracy theories are difficult to sustain if you have no information behind them. Even with information, it becomes difficult because that information is always out of context, irrelevant, or just plain wrong. Without it, it's just an idiot yelling. Look at conservatives' elevation of "Antifa" to some kind of Illuminati-like organization. All it shows is fear. Emotion can only sustain a theory for so long, eventually, they need someone to buttress their claim. Someone or something with esteem that can inject a foundation into their theory. This week we meet this person, and it does not go well. 

The first thing we have to do is wrap up the attack on academics/intellectuals/liberals that was started last week. This brings us to a strange realization that I don't know if the authors (and those that agree with them are aware of): that they attack intelligent people for disagreeing with them. This is similar to religious people trying to stop education that isn't religious because they fear that the more educated you become the less religious you will be, which is statistically true but their worry really shows their weakness. I was at a wedding talking to a medical doctor when I just started my PhD program, and a relative of the M.D. came over and called us "liberals" in a sneering way. We merely shrugged and asked if we were liberals because we were smart. He went away. 

The book writes, "Intellectuals' are fond of mouthing cliches like, 'the conspiracy theory is often tempting, but it is overly simplistic.' To ascribe everything to a group of power hungry conspirators is overly simplistic but..." the authors continue claiming that it is actually the most simplistic thing to hold on to the accidental explanation of human history. Firstly, if you call your side "overly simplistic" it means it's wrong. Not because it is simple but because of the modifier "overly." The authors misunderstand what we mean by simplistic as well. We don't mean it's simple or an easy explanation, we mean that it's a one size fits all explanation for everything which makes it wrong. The same group faked the Moon Landing that sabotaged the Soviet Space program, that mired us Vietnam, that caused Watergate, etc. 

Again the opposite is what they call the "accidental view" of history. This is a strawman argument, as I mentioned last week, historians ascribe cause and effect, but cause and effect in this case isn't newtonian mechanics. WWI caused WWII is a simplistic cause and effect explanation that fits with Allen's worldview in this book. The accidental explanation is that WWI laid the groundwork for a whole bunch of cultural, social, and economic conditions which led to the situation that created the fertile ground for a second World War to begin. What we mean by accident (when we use it which we don't) is that it wasn't a necessary condition. WWII didn't have to happen, if Hitler could paint better perhaps the Nazis never take power. If Japan doesn't beat the Russian in a Naval contest they perhaps never think they can. None of it is necessary, is the point. 

This conspiratorial view thinks that everything is necessary and part of a plan. This the book calls "the devil theory of history" and the book thinks that liberals love the term even though it has no meaning. In fact we use it as a cliche. Now, I've never used the phrase, but I'm going to, all it means is the conspiratorial worldview. It also means that the the authors don't know what the word "cliche" means. 

The chapter is about to close when the conspiracists try to argue why everyone else is wrong. They say that we think all problems are caused by "poverty, ignorance, and disease" which they are going to shorten to PID. They're not going to disagree with this, what they are going to say is that the PID is being used by "them" to control the world. Ok, at least they're not going to argue that. This does elucidate the problem that conspiracists have in that they try to treat a cause that doesn't exist so that they can ignore the symptom. This is apparent in the "lab-leak" theory of Covid-19. Let's assume that Covid-19 came from a Chinese lab accidentally...ok, so now what? Do we get to ignore that the American GOP and president Trump failed at every step to provide real solutions, safeguards, and leadership during the crisis? Do we have to ignore that the former president praised the Chinese government and president Xi for their efforts in containing it? No. Conspiracists don't have to care about poverty because they are busy chasing the dragon which causes it. This magical thinking tells them that once the dragon is slain, the poverty will clear itself up. 

Finally, we are introduced to the conspiracists token intellectual that they are likely going to use for the entire book: Professor Carroll Quigley. Quigley earned a PhD in history from Harvard, taught there Princeton, and then finally Georgetown. I had never heard of him before but Dr. Quigley is likely to become really familiar to all of us by the time this is over. Quigley wrote a book that our book describes as a 1300 page 8 lb tome. A description that no one ever uses when they want someone else to read their source. 1300 pages?! I'm not going to read that, I'll just trust that this book has it right. 8lbs? I couldn't carry that around, best not read it then. 

This book, "Tragedy and Hope" is a great example of when conspiracists think they have an ally because they don't really understand what they've read. A further example of this would be when Alex Jones interviewed Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky. Chomsky had written about propaganda and Jones, not understanding what he meant, thought he had an ally...until the interview happened and Chomsky repeatedly disagreed with Jones' interpretation (25 May 2001). Jones realizing he doesn't have an ally or the capacity to fight him, ends the interview (over a disagreement about guns) and tells him to say hi to David Rockefeller. 

I've not read Tragedy and Hope, but Quigley was cited by Bill Clinton as an inspiration. A quick perusal of his Wikipedia page claims that Quigley felt America's greatest strength was that its inclusivity--a thought utterly foreign and alien to conspiracist culture on the right wing.  He gets cited in this book though because he claimed in this 8lb book that there was a cabal of bankers that ran everything. 

Uh oh...well not really. Quigley's view seems to have been that a few individuals, notably Cecil Rhodes (of Rhodes scholar fame) and Alfred Milner had created a group of rich people that had an inordinate amount of influence over the British government. Allen basically uses this as proof that there exists an Illuminati that controls the world. However, this is not what Tragedy and Hope claims. 

This is an idea we will have to return to as I need to research more. As a last parting shot, Quigley was alive when this book came out and had some words about None Dare Call it Conspiracy in much the same way that Milton Cooper lambasted the up and coming Alex Jones:

"For example, they constantly misquote me to this effect: that Lord Milner (the dominant trustee of the Cecil Rhodes Trust and a heavy in the Round Table Group) helped finance the Bolsheviks. I have been through the greater part of Milner's private papers and have found no evidence to support that. Further, None Dare Call It Conspiracy insists that international bankers were a single bloc, were all powerful and remain so today. I, on the contrary, stated in my book that they were much divided, often fought among themselves, had great influence but not control of political life and were sharply reduced in power about 1931-1940, when they became less influential than monopolized industry."