That Does Not Do What you Think It Does: None Dare Call It...pp. 26-30

 Bill Kaysing was a survivalist and one of those off-the-grid types in the American 1960s. He wrote a few books directed at ex-city dwellers who moved to rural areas (white flight types), he wrote a book called "how to eat well for under a dollar a day." Yet, no one reading this knows these books, they know Kaysing though because he was the first person to publish a book claiming that the Moon Landing was faked. This was back in 1976 and nothing in the Moon Landing Hoax conspiracy theory is any different than today's theory. 

I bring it up because Kaysing does something in his book that is repeated here: to argue that the conspiracy theory is true because there have been conspiracies in the past. Kaysing argues that the American involvement in South American, the U2 flight that was shot down over the USSR, and the project Ultra (the British effort at decrypting the Nazi Enigma code machine) were kept from the public. Those three events are examples of conspiracies so therefore it's quite plausible that the government would lie about landing on the Moon. It's a bullshit argument for a few reasons but the most obvious is that it is an example of a false analogy. Just because x happened and y requires a similar set of causes does not mean that Y happened.

Allen in this book makes the same type of argument towards those that think that the grand conspiracy doesn't exist. He accuses us of thinking that the formerly iconic Life Magazine is also full of conspiracy theorists because they published a series of articles on the McClellan hearings, which exposed the U.S. to the existence of the mafia. Notably, they contained the testimony of Joe Vallachi who confirmed: "the Mafia's" existence (something FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused to do), the formal hierarchy of it, the five families, and the commission. So if Allen is a crazy conspiracy theorist for believing in his world view then we must all be because Life Magazine wrote about the Vallachi testimony, "Most people did not know the organization was called Cosa Nostra. Until Valachi 'sang' we thought it was named 'the Mafia.'" 

Whether it was called the Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or Our little thing; is an irrelevant fact. What matters is that people knew that organized crime existed. This wasn't a conspiracy theory. Organized crime is a conspiracy but as it happens there is plenty of evidence to make the accusations stick. The name of the organization is a non-issue. Vallachi revealed things that denizens of the Bronx, the Buffalo waterfront, Las Vegas, South Boston, Providence; all knew but he revealed it to lawmakers, congress, and mid-western farmers who would have been aware tangentially that such an organization existed from pop-culture.

Allen/Kaysing might retort, "fine but it at least proves that such a conspiracy could happen."

Well, does it? In his political philosophy book, "The Open Society and Its Enemies," philosopher of science Karl Popper argues that successful conspiracy theories don't exist, because we wouldn't be aware of them. It's not just the actions committed but it is also the secrecy that is the mark of a successful conspiracy theory. The Vallachi testimony meant that the mafia conspiracy had failed. Their code of secrecy had been broken. Similarly with Ultra, it got out eventually, but the real target of that conspiracy also no longer existed--so maybe this one was a successful conspiracy theory in that it was kept from the people that it was supposed to be kept from. 

That we know of the mafia is indicative that such a nation-spanning conspiracy theory would be impossible to keep secret. Machiavelli, in his Discourses, writes that a conspiracy of more than three people cannot be kept secret. Someone always talks because people like to brag about knowing a secret. Other people just can't help themselves. No matter what the reason, someone always talks. The Watergate break-in was conducted by around a dozen people total, some of them ex-intelligence operatives, and it didn't take more than a year before evidence started coming to light that the president was involved in it. 

What the Vallachi testimony actually proves is the opposite of what Allen thinks it proves. The conspiracy is impossible to keep quiet because it is so large (see: Grimes 2016 ).

Finally, for this week, Allen goes back to the fake street interviews that eventually gave us his definition of "communism." He pretends that most Americans would think that "the Socialism" is all but inevitable in this society. However, he's committed a huge mistake. His fake interviews have begun with asking about Communism, but then he switches to asking about Socialism. This is not only a bait and switch, but since his definition of "communism" is not Communism at all, we can only suspect that his view of Socialism is not actually Socialism either. As I said last week, it's impossible to know what he's talking about other than that he's just making people angry and sixty years later these same types of people will storm a capital building. 

I'll end this week with a quote from U.S. Attorney William Hundley, the man in charge of Vallachi's protection, "My days with Valachi convinced me that the Cosa Nostra was the most overrated thing since the Communist party."