Globe & Mail: Correcting Conspiracies

One thing I appreciate about the Globe & Mail, as opposed to, say, CanWest media, is the G&M’s willingness to at least cover subjects such as the Bilderberg meetings, along with the subject of the SPP, and other so-called conspiracies, particularly in today’s online edition, which forms the subject of today’s blog post.

You can read the article HERE.

In today’s article, Ivor Tossell takes on Zeitgeist and Loose Change, two internet videos making the rounds. Someone has offered commentary on Tossell’s piece, which is more of a summary of the two videos than a thorough de-bunking of conspiracist thinking.

Personally, I am not an apologist for 9-11 conspiracies, but I am definitely an advocate of thinking critically about the ‘official’ 9-11 storyline, as laid out by our governments. That bias stems from my inherent distrust of governments and corporate elites, for I am forever haunted by two men, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Eric Hoffer. I mean, everyone knows that governments never lie to their people, right?

Tossell advances appeal to authority in his article, citing the Popular Mechanics de-bunking of 9-11 myths:

The funny thing about this stuff is that it’s all been thoroughly debunked for years. Everyone from Scientific American to Popular Mechanics have produced reports puncturing the central claims of the 9/11 theory, and when you look gullible next to Popular Mechanics, you know you’re in trouble.

This is an appeal to authority, and for the average Joe who’s unwilling to dig deeper, an explanation from Popular Mechanics often suffices to satiate one’s appetite for knowledge of 9-11. Popular Mechanics says A, therefore A must be true. Therefore, whenever I yell “September 11!” you yell out “Popular Mechanics!”.

Yes, in fact, Popular Mechanics may have a true explanation; but does that mean it is infallible, and can therefore be exempted from criticism? This tactic was used along a different vein by Penn & Teller, who likened dissent from the official 9-11 conspiracy theory, as posited by the United States Government, to a lack of patriotism, or worse, a violation of the graves of the many who died in the Twin Towers.

Some critics have argued that Popular Mechanics set up a 9-11 ‘straw man‘, an easily-refuted or misrepresented version of the real argument meant to be de-bunked. Find out for yourself and discern your own truth on that one.

But of course, that point itself is a straw-man that Tossell has set up for the reader. The issue is not de-bunking, but how lone-wolf researchers gain credibility in the conspiracy culture just by being rejected by their peers. Tossell writes:

Evidently, debunking isn’t the issue. You can’t argue aliens with someone who has an “I want to believe” poster on his or her office wall. Nor can you cite the findings of the professional, journalistic, and academic consensus to someone who’s decided that having credibility means being under the sway of shadowy forces. To that line of thinking, an expert who is rejected by his peers — say, for lunatic conspiracy thinking — gains credibility just for being ostracized.

I can offer one of many answers to Tossell’s conundrum, posed by my friend, Don Hill:

Son, I’ll tell you three things, and three things only. Number one - in the absence of fact, myth prevails. Number two - change the myth, change the culture. And finally, treat everything I say as lies.”

Let’s treat every explanation of 9-11 as a possible lie, and instead of saying ‘that’s too crazy’, we ought to ask ourselves if a particular theory is crazy enough.

There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo. LINK

Tossell is not frustrated with 9-11 conspiracy thinking, for it is but a manifestation of the internet’s impact on our culture. The internet is by nature, a populist-enabling technology that is often at odds with the mainstream model of media that engenders the idea of the ‘journalist as professional’. In the absence of the internet, would these theories find as much presence in our mainstream, retail media?

Tossel’s troubles continue:

What troubles me the most is that, for all the talk of skepticism, conspiracy counterculture is really an anti-intellectual, populist movement — much like Intelligent Design. For all their absurdity, conspiracy theorists try to drag everything back to the level of common sense.

In Ivor’s world view, the conspiracy crowd is anti-intellectual, and populist. In his perspective, for one to be regarded as an intellectual, they must be in synch with the status-quo or consensus of prevailing knowledge, probably in the way Galileo was immediately revered by his peers for positing a heliocentric view of the universe [sarcasm alert]. The internet movement in search of the ‘truth’ behind 9-11 is populist in nature, and therefore bad. The antonym of populism is elitism, so Ivor is potentially in favour of a little more elitism in regards to understanding truth.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I would argue that there are no conspiracies. Everything is done out in the open. Most of this information is out there, and it is up to each of us to search out the facts, knowing full well that either the inclusion of false facts or the omission of true facts will definitely taint one’s interpretation of the ‘truth’. I agree with Ivor in the sense that people filter facts according to their own subjective biases. But it happens on all sides of the issue. We all see what we want to.

Having said that, I’m leaning to a PoMo verison of 9-11 - let everyone believe what they want to, and let’s try to view 9-11 through as many lenses and perspectives as possible before writing off dissenting views as kooky thinking. None of us is omniscient regarding 9-11. No, not even our governments, professional elites, nor the common man. To the class of people who feel conspired against by the status quo, a conspiracist version of history offers them an explanation. To the class of scholars with perks like tenure to risk, going against the mainstream consensus of truth can be professional suicide. And, finally, let’s let the class professional of journalists believe that all views that do not fit within the constraints of retail media (advertisers, editors, status-quo readership) can be derided as ‘kooky’, so that they can go on believing they too, are ‘right’. It’s a win-win solution.