These works help untangle the mysterious popularity of conspiracy theories
1. The Paranoid Style in American Politics
By Richard Hofstadter, Knopf, 1965
First conceived as a university lecture, Richard Hofstadter’s seminal essay—the title work in this collection—remains the place to begin any discussion of conspiracy theories. “Heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” are hallmarks of the paranoid style, writes Hofstadter (1916-70). To paranoia’s purveyors, “history is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power.” Hofstadter was writing about extreme right-wing groups, such as the John Birch Society, that flourished in the early 1960s. It’s a pity that he is not here to analyze today’s extreme leftists who promote the line that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 terror attacks.
2. Enemies Within
By Robert Alan Goldberg, Yale, 2001
Of the nearly dozen books that have been published in the past decade about the rise of conspiracism, historian Robert Alan Goldberg’s Enemies Within is unrivaled. He explores five conspiracy theories that have gained popularity in the past half-century: the cover-up of a UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico; the plot against black America; the rise of the anti-Christ; the establishment of the New World Order; and, of course, the assassination of JFK. Goldberg expertly illuminates the political and social conditions that have allowed conspiracy-mongers, once consigned to the lunatic fringe, to creep into the mainstream.
3. The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies
By William Hanchett, University of Illinois, 1983
To understand conspiratorial thinking, it is instructive to study how explanations for a historical event evolve over time. No work is more useful in this regard than William Hanchett’s The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies. Lincoln’s assassination was, of course, part of a real conspiracy aimed at decapitating the federal government. Most of the schemers were caught and executed. But the chief mover, John Wilkes Booth, was killed before he could be arrested, denying the country the catharsis of a courtroom drama and a definitive account of what occurred. Thus competing theories about the assassination began to appear. By tracing them during the century following Lincoln’s death, Hanchett illustrates an immutable truth: Ultimately, conspiracy theories tell us more about their authors and about human nature than they do about the event itself.
4. Praise From a Future Generation
By John Kelin, Wings Press, 2007
This work deserves to be read—but not for the purpose the author intended. According to John Kelin, a few hardy souls in the late 1960s dared speak truth to power and turned the American public against the government’s “unacceptable” Warren Report of 1964 investigating JFK’s assassination. The real history is more complicated, and large chunks of it are missing from this book. You will not learn from Kelin, for instance, that Mark Lane—a New York lawyer who was Lee Harvey Oswald’s self-appointed chief defender—was secretly subsidized by the KGB. Yet because Kelin draws heavily from primary sources—mostly private letters between “assassination buffs,” as writer Calvin Trillin dubbed them back then—this book is a fascinating portrait of how conspiracy theories about JFK’s death were nurtured mostly by liberals desperate to find an alternate explanation for the murder of President Kennedy by an avowed Marxist.
5. Presidential Commissions & National Security
By Kenneth Kitts, Lynne Rienner, 2006
When a monumental event occurs that transcends the power of the courts to uncover the truth, the US government turns to special commissions—most recently for the investigation into the 9/11 terror attacks. The findings are usually well received, but over time the authority of these efforts often wanes. In Presidential Commissions & National Security, Kenneth Kitts shows why federal panels are imperfect and why they often inadvertently spur the conspiracy thinking they are designed to minimize. The Roberts Commission report on Pearl Harbor, for instance, begot countless books alleging that President Roosevelt knew in advance about the attack. No matter how lofty their aims, Kitts says, government-commission reports are inevitably political documents and will come to be seen as such.
Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal © 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Sir.
'Work helping untangle the mysterious popularity of conspiracy theories' is made impossible by statements such as "When a monumental event occurs that transcends the power of the courts to uncover the truth, the US government turns to special commissions—most recently for the investigation into the 9/11 terror attacks."
[5. Presidential Commissions & National Security/Kenneth Kitts, Lynne Rienner, 2006:]
................................................................................................................
"When a monumental event occurs that transcends the power of the courts to uncover the truth..."
I beg our pardon. But when and by what process did the high crime of 9/11 become an event 'transcending' the reach of criminal law?
Where is 'power' and 'transcendence' defined, allowing material fact and legal contest of physical evidence 'unrecoverable?'
Where is the legal precedent establishing the criminal law courts of the United States of America unable to properly process evidence properly found ?
If there is evidence to argue the crime, how can the crime transcend the law?
To the question of 'untangling popular conspiracy theory' as opposed to 'untangling evidence of crime':
Why is the discovery, collection and presentation of evidence of advanced grade incendiary materiel [nanothermite] found in the dust of 9/11, not openly contested in the US justice system ?
Why is the unprecedented speed and destruction of 3 complex steel framed high rises not properly tested in courts, if there is material/materiel evidence to argue it ?
Why is the 'critical fail' algorithm created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] to explain a 'new phenomenon' in physics and building science, hidden behind states secrets privilege? And not available for peer-review in the proper and usual course of science? If over 2300 registered architects and engineers state the buildings destruction was, prima facie, demolition?
Experts in their field wish to properly test the algorithm as is proper in scientific peer-review.
Why are the over one hundred eyewitnesses to the crime testifying to explosive events in the WTC complex before, during and after airstrike never given due process in the courts of law ? Is it beyond the capability of persons trained in law and evidence in the United States to untangle the testimonies of first responders and survivors to these accounts ?
Why was the hasty and protected removal of steel not investigated as a crime in and of itself? The existence of molten metal/concrete in the pile also—forensic evidence of extreme temperatures far beyond ordinary building fire capability—-all easily contestable and within capability of law to adjudicate.
In fact, the sudden total free-fall destruction of an 81 columned 47 storied steel framed high-rise [WTC7] in 6.5 seconds, remains completely unreported—-and therefore a mystery—-in the popular imagination. Not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report itself, thus 'adding' to the 'mystery'; to the tangle.
Forensic contest of airspeed; passenger manifest anomalies; no hi-jack alerts; FBI court evidence establishing Barbara Olsen's lengthy phone call describing events on flight 77 at 0 [zero] seconds duration, Norman Manetta's revelation of Cheney's order allowing Pentagon airspace violation by 77 have all been placed outside the public 'right to know' through a political process, not a judicial or scientific, one.
After all, fraud is no mystery to the American legal system. The law has vast experience dealing with fraud and fraudsters.
As well as it has with evidence of incendiary materiel in fire-insurance claims.
Posted by: remo.rogermorris | 15 January 2016 at 08:58 PM
9/11 as False Flag:
Why International Law Must Dare to Care
Amy Baker Benjamin*
Abstract: At the heart of contemporary international law lies a paradox: The attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 have justified nearly fifteen years of international war, yet the official international community, embodied principally in the United Nations, has failed to question or even scrutinize the U.S. government’s account of those attacks. Despite the impressive and serious body of literature that has emerged to suggest that 9/11 was a classic (if unprecedentedly monstrous) false-flag attack, international statesmen, following the lead of scholars, have acted as if there is no controversy whatsoever. This disconnect between the growing (alternative) evidentiary record of state responsibility for the attacks and the focus of international institutions is impossible to sustain if those institutions are to maintain any semblance of viability and meaning.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2713267
Posted by: remo.rogermorris | 17 January 2016 at 04:45 PM