The other day, a reader named “slomo” brought up an excellent point:
Normally, Christian fundamentalists scare the bejeezus out of me. But I think many of them are as concerned as we are about government encroachments into our mental, spiritual and psychic space. Note the growing concern about RFID’s being the “mark of the beastâ€. (For example, google “RFID and 666″). The general narrative is that any Christian who accepts the “mark†will lose his soul.
I generally avoid any metaphysical statement that can’t be backed up by a well-grounded and/or pragmatic interpretation. But now it’s crystal clear to me how one loses his soul by accepting the “markâ€. Basically, any device that provides external access to your neurochemistry exposes you to control of your spiritual progress (at least in the present incarnation). Accept the device in the 21st century age of psychopharmaceuticals and psychotronics and you doom yourself to total government control.
If this can be articulated in these terms to Christians who will listen, it might be possible to build a broad resistance.
This divide among conspiracy theorists has been on my mind for a while. As far as I see it, there have classically been 4 main camps of conspiracy theorists (with a lot of overlap, but this is just for argument’s sake): (1) Christian conspiracy theorists - people who take their cues from the Bible in uncovering what’s going on and presenting solutions to it; (2) “Regular” conspiracy theorists - people who don’t hate the system, they just want to make sure things don’t get really crazy; (3) Anti-government conspiracy theorists - people who see conspiracy theory as a means to unravel the whole mess and start over with something else; (4) Racist conspiracy theory - people who’s quest seems to revolve very heavily around xenophobia and figuring out and condemning particular ethnic groups.
You could go and branch these out further, I’m sure, but this is at least a good start. Interestingly, one of the things we see a lot amongst conspiracy theorists is a lot of in-fighting about who is on the “right” path, and whether or not what the other groups are doing is “enough.” Shit like that. For me personally, I find all the racist strains of conspiracy theory to be highly objectionable, if not dangerous. I also have to admit that sometimes pulling Jesus into an otherwise fine conspiracy theory is a fantastic way to shoot yourself in the foot. But I’m sure from both of these groups’ perspectives, people like me either don’t go far enough, or are on the wrong track entirely.
I wonder if there’s really a way to resolve conflicts like this, or if it’s even worth trying. The conspiracy theories each of these groups produces stems from a much broader underlying world-view and story-system. So it seems like if you just told them “drop the racism” or “can the Jesus talk,” you’re not going to get anywhere - even if it meant getting a broader audience, or joining forces. It seems like most people would rather be right and alone than unified and compromised. And can you blame them? Conspiracy theory tends to be a way for people to break away from the mainstream, and stand up for their beliefs and values which go against the grain. Coaxing them into some kind of “conspiracy coalition” would basically mean asking them to throw away the gains they’ve made to their individualized or group identity through their particular conspiratorial story-system.
So what’s the solution? Not sure, but I thought of a couple other problems. Maybe articulating those will move us in a new direction. Here’s a problem I see common to both Christian and racist conspiracies (in general): both these groups have a very specific and well-known shape which their conspiracies take. This opens up a very real possibility of manipulation. For example, if people in government want to trick the racist conspiracy theorists, all they need to do is talk about cracking down on immigrants, or put out some kind of weird racist pamphlet about the Jews, the Blacks, the Inuit, or whatever. For Christians, I see this kind of outright manipulation every day on the regular news, plus even moreso on Christian television stations. They have wall-to-wall broadcasts about the Book of Revelation, and spend a great deal of time illustrating how well modern events fit it, and how the Final War in the Holy Land is coming. I know in one sense this is what they believe. But in another, it smells like social engineering around a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you haven’t noticed, war in the Middle East conveniently manipulates both racist and Christian conspiracy theorists.
[ Just for the record, the other thing that gets me about Christian conspiracy theory is the enduring promise that if I just admit I'm a sinner and open my heart to Jesus, then everything will be fine. I don't have to do much of anything else except trust in Him, because "God" is eventually going to take care of the bad guys. Oh but people are suffering now? Well, spread the Gospel! Bring others to Jesus! Problem solved! Except, no, problem not solved; problem deferred. ]
“Regular” and anti-government conspiracy theorists of course have their blindspots as well. For “regulars”, I would say the most common one is the “return to normalcy” fantasy - namely, that things are bad now but with a few changes, it could all be okay again. The anti-government blindspot seems to me to be, conversely, that (1) everything needs to go down the tubes for it to be cool, and (2) the possibility that another group could hijack the movement - for example: infusing a socialist/communist agenda into it - which seems to be a big part of what happened in the 60’s & 70’s. (PS. I’m sure Christians or racists would also add that these groups’ blindspots are also Jesus as Savior, and various ethnic groups as enemies)
For me, the way around the blindspots of each group is not to rigidly belong to any of them. Maintaining a fluid identity and story-system keeps your next move unpredictable and opens you to possibilities that any one of the groups by themselves wouldn’t necessarily see. Or that’s the theory anyway. In practice, it probably opens me up to other blindspots of which I’m not aware. But who knows. Anyway, I don’t pretend to have the answers to this, or know if there even are any. I just thought it would be worthwhile to get the ball rolling on discussing it.
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8 Comments
Another blindspot in Christian conspiracies is the “gullibility factor”. Some of the news sites devoted to uncovering the mark of the beast and the coming one-world religion regularly fall prey to stories that are really just satire. One that comes to mind recently is about a church that were giving out Verichips to their congregation. Nearly every christian site picked up on it and the forums were a buzzing … no one had the discernment to point out the fact that it had originated at a site specializing satire. In their zeal to document the massive structure of the antichrist apparatus, they easily fall prey to this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Basic research is often neglected as well. How many more times are we going to be subjected to the “Taxil Hoax” quotes about Pike’s admission of freemasonry’s “true doctrine of Lucifer”! In most situations the lie perpetuates because of malice with the intent to deceive: they have no problem with the Luciferian quotes and the Palladian Rites but they neglect to recount other absudities such as Pike’s devil communicating bracelet, and the time he was wisked away by Satan to Sirius in a round trip that took only minutes. Taxil made fools out of the church a hundred years ago; they’re doing it to themselves today.
One thing they have as an advantage, I feel, over their more secular counterparts is the fact that evil is always factored into the equation. As the saying goes, “the biggest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing everyone that he doesn’t exist.” The recent stories in the news about ritual sacrifice underscores the worth of a line of investigation that rests solely upon uncovering the machinations of the “chief adversary.”
if for nothing else,i am gratefull to r.a.w. for reminding me that we must maintain a sense of humour.satire,to the humour-impaired,reads as fact.the “taxil hoax” was a masterful play on the inability of certain types to be humerous in thier approach to life.dogma has always equated,in my mind,to humourlessness.i tend to stay away from the downmouth crowd.if your face is stuck like that it`s a clue to me that you`ve been pissing on your own parade for too long.
but maybe it does only take a few minutes to get to sirius and back,in the right ride.
I don’t know that it would be that very much different than the intense societal controls we’re under now, except that maybe they’re be able to shut off our “this is wrong” button. (Look at the “thelema” conversation for instance- we’re arguing about whether or not another group is gnostic because they flaunt the control systems a bit more boldly- but the social controls- sex, bad, drugs, bad, weird, bad, lazy, bad are just as superstition based as they always have been!) We’re now possibly facing a political control system we find intolerant, but I suspect we won’t fight it for the same reasons we won’t fight the others much-fear of being outcast, seen as weird or backward or “tinfoil beanie.” Right when we think we’re the most free, we might be the most trapped.
Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it was a dumb idea, and my usual gut response to Christian fundamentalists (ick) is the right one.
Your taxonomy and analysis of conspiracy theories is interesting and insightful. I think it could be the subject of a sociology PhD thesis.
the world of christian conspiracy is curiously oriented vis-a-vis the bushies. so much of bush’s support comes from his fundy base - yet so much conspiracy is fundy-apocalyptic in nature. what kind of strange conversations that might be going on in trailer parks across the south… are there disaffected teens secretly reading david icke, hating their parents with their ‘i support president bush and our troops” stickers? i’ve read a number of “i think my mom has been replaced by a reptile” type posts in various fringe UFO forums. it’s kinda sad really.
disaffected teens secretly reading david icke
or whoevers the leading fundy-apocalyptic conspiricist.
I see gnosticism as a meta-conspiracy - a template or paradigm for conspiracies after it (i know, thought not original to me but it works)
See also Bataille’s fantastic essay “The Sacred Conspiracy” - tom e this really sums up something profound and important
rev: check out jeremy’s awesome post about how gnosticism is the “ultimate” conspiracy theory.