We’ve all been there. 1.30am, drunk as a skunk at somebody’s house-party, trying to locate the last pack of rizlas. When suddenly somebody pipes up with “but you see, it was all planned by the American government. I watched this video on the internet that proves 9/11 was a conspiracy”. And then the shit hits the fan. The room divides. On one side stand the Angels; guided by the light of reason they seek to point out the folly of said Conspiracy Theory. On the other stand the Believers; they knowthe world is run by a sinister group or Americans/Jews/Lizards from Mars, and they implore you to see “the truth”.

 Here are some thoughts on Conspiracy Theory in general. Nothing too high-powered, just some reflections on three that seem to have too much in common (oooh, perhaps it’s a conspiracy?!)

The Holocaust and the Jews who control the World
In general, holocaust deniers are just anti-Semites who make a half-hearted attempt to present themselves as respectable, impartial academics. Most ordinary people don’t give them any time, except perhaps the odd heretical thought that says “perhaps they have a point, or else why would people keep saying it?”

Of course, the answer to that last question is that they keep saying it because they are all neo-Nazi anti-Semites who want to trick people into doubting Holocaust I so they can try and facilitate Holocaust II (which would be bigger and better, because this time not only would no Jews survive, but also nobody would even remember they’d ever existed, thus coming a glorious 180 degrees and no longer needing to deny the holocaust! Beautiful, really.).

But one ugly thought that does keep doing the rounds is that ‘Jews Control The World’, or in it’s slightly more sophisticated guise; ‘Jews, mostly from or connected to Israel, Control the American Government, which Controls the World’. This is a thought i find surprisingly common, even in only embryonic or un-thought-out form. Which leads nicely on to….

9/11 Was a Conspiracy by the American Government (which may or may not be controlled by Jews)
We all know this one only too well. 9/11 had to be a fake, because the temperature at which jet-plane fuel burns isn’t enough to melt the super-structure of either Twin Tower, the damage done to the pentagon was more like a missile than a crached plane, fighter jets weren’t scrambled as protocol said they should have been etc etc yadda yadda. Now as it happens, all those “facts” are in fact not; but, unfortunately, pointing out to Conspiracy Theorists that ‘the Internet’ and assorted wackos sitting in their mother’s basements are not reliable sources of information never does the trick. Even getting the hard facts out and sticking them up their noses doesn’t do the trick. Why? Because they are convinced by a crazy logic that informs them that regardless of facts, the US government must have planned 9/11….

 …because It’s All About Oil and Money (IAAOM). That’s right, the US government faked 9/11 – the worst (non-state directed) terrorist atrocity in human history, where over 3000 US civilians died, which threw the global and US economy into chaos - because it wanted an excuse to invade middle eastern nations so as to grab oil (and on some stories, to do the bidding of the Masters in Israel).

Which leads nicely to our next case…

Srebrenica
A less well known, but equally virulent conspiracy theory is that the Serb attrocities at Srebrenica and the wider Serbian genocide - comparable to the Jewish Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide in all but scale – did not take place and were faked by Western governments. This ties into a larger theory that there was no ethnic cleansing in the Balkans at all in the early 1990s. No, rather than pay attention to witness testimonies, the reports and footage provided by on-the-spot journalists, or thousands of reputable academic sources, it makes far more sense to say that Western Governments invented a crisis in the Balkans so they could bomb innocent Serbia, thus fuelling the military-industrial complex, and establish new markets for Western Capitalism to expand into.  Once again, IAAOM (though perhaps less about oil this time).

But if this doesn’t already sound completely bonkers, hopefully some brief, selective remarks will make it apparent, which is that the internal logic of these conspiracy theories is utterly, utterly insane.

Firstly let’s spell out the logical stupidity of these claims. If 9/11 was orchestrated by the Americans in order to acquire oil and to stomp all over the middle east – presumably to secure its own economy - why do something that massively destabilises its own economy? And if it is alleged that the destablisation was a ’short run cost’, then there still remains the question, why even bother with the pretext? As far as i can remember, the US has never bothered to provide much justification for most of its over-seas ventures, so why start now, and why start with such a massive, and in many was self-defeating, project? The US simply didn’t need 9/11. And don’t say that it needed the pre-text so as to invade ‘oil rich’ Afghanistan. As far as i can tell, Afghanistan itself is not particularly oil rich. Objectors at this point usually point to its neighbours who are, and cite an American project to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. But surely it would have been easier to build such a pipeline without destroying what little infrastructure that country had, and cutting a deal with the Taliban. Fair enough, the Taliban didn’t want to cut a deal….that’s why they bombed the Twin Towers…but wait! You can’t use that line, because allegedly the US did 9/11! See how the logic pulls apart? As with Iraq, the US was going to invade it regardless of 9/11 - nobody of policy-making or directing importance seriously maintained had any connection between Iraq and 9/11 before or after 2003 – and even the Bush administration now basically admits it was an all-round, balls out cock-up.

As for Srebrenica, well it’s just madness. As a general rule, markets are far more efficient during peace than during war…unless you want to sell weapons, in which case there has to be a war….in which case the charge that ‘the West’ faked it all is a little inconsistent with IAAOM. Again, the logic pulls apart. To ram it home: if the West did everything for money, and faked the Balkans crisis, why not intervene in 1990/1, rather than waiting for minimum intervention in 1994, and allowing Srebrenica to take place in 1995? It it was all a fake, why wait 5 years to intervene ‘properly’ (if the intervention can be termed thus)?

Secondly (and more importantly, and less open to pedantic little counter-moves regarding the details of given theories), conspiracy theories are not, contrary to what their proponents will tell you, the grim, stark truth that we should accept once the wool has been pulled from over our eyes. Quite the contrary in fact.

What links the above three cases of conspiracy theory is (at least) one thing: that sombody or some group controls the world, to the point where then can orchestrate events on the scale of 9/11 or the Balkans war, or the Jewish Holocaust, or Srebrenica. That’s supposed to be a super scary thought. But it’s not. Because if the US (or the Jews, or ‘the West’) controls the world, then it’s a pretty safe place. Sure, they may blow up a few thousand civilians once since 1945 (when US hegemony is usually assumed to have begun), but on the whole, as they control the world, they will ensure that western civilisation goes on largely untouched. Even if that means faking a war here, and killing some far-off towel heads and sand-niggers there. 

Here’s a much scarier thought. The world is controlled by nobody; it’s all a big mess. Trying to direct that mess are some seriously incompetent people. They are so incompetent they failed to see all the warning signs of 9/11, to anticipate that the way Afghanistan was invaded would be a disaster in the short and long run, and failed to foresee that that Iraq would become the biggest disaster since Vietnam, and will possibly be a far more serious one considering its effects on the growth and capabilities of radical Islam. Alongside those incompetents are a set of crazed fundamentalists all vying for influence and control. On the one hand you have the obvious candidates; bin Laden, Kim Jong Il etc, but on the other you have (a minority of)Zionists in Israel clammering for blood and describing the West Bank as “a people-less land for a people without a land”, but also the (i think somewhat waning) influence of the Christian Right in American politics, as well as cynical, ruthless manipulators, for example Putin in Russia who seems to me nothing but a re-incarnation of Soviet leadership. These people are seriously deluded, intollerant, self-assured, spread around the globe and all competing for control and power. None of them has all the control or all the power; they’re all trying to get it, and to a large extent they don’t care how.

Some of them want control for nobler aims than others; for all Bush and Blair’s failings, i’d rather live in a world they control – or have the most influence in – than one run by Iranian Ayatollahs; only a bizarre cultural relativist (or a muslim fundamentalist) would think otherwise. But the brute truth of the matter is that nobody controls what’s going on, especially not Americans or Jews. If they did, we could all sleep a little safer in our beds at night; for this supposed all-controlling world conspiracy is a surprisingly benevolent one, at least regards we the privileged Westerners.

When it’s spelled out like that, i rather suspect that many conspiracy theory adherents might want to re-think their positions. For all his supposed bravery and ability to stare unflinchingly at the cold hard truth, the conspiracy theorist is simply wrapping himself in the security-blanket of knowing everything is – quite literally – under control, and so there’s no real need to worry.  

But one thing that the world right is certainly not under right now is control.

For an amusing cartoon, and a wonderfully simple demolition-job of 9/11 conspiracy theories, go here for a giggle.