“Commentary by David Reilly

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.”

By Arthur Goldwag on News

Forty-five years ago, Harpers magazine published Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” The occasion for the piece was the revenant conservatism that had driven Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign (the magazine hit the newsstands the month of the Johnson/Goldwater election), but it remains astonishingly apt. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who wants to understand the mentalités of fringe political movements in the United States–from the Anti-Masons and Know Nothings in the first half of the 1800s, to McCarthyism, the Nation of Islam, and the Weathermen in the last century, to the Birthers and Truthers today.

I hesitate to bring up 9/11 Truth again after the firestorm of commentary I unleashed last week, but read Hofstadter on the pedantry of paranoid literature and tell me that he doesn’t nail some of the most contentious of the posters (most of whom were probably not even born when the piece was written) with a psychoanalyst’s precision and a novelist’s sympathy:

“One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed…..Respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it….”

In recent months, there has been a lot of talk about what historian Richard Hofstadter called the “the paranoid style in American politics.” To believe the Glenn Becks of the world, the Democrats and their Commie, tree-hugging comrades are going to take away Americans’ guns, confiscate private property, enslave free thinkers, and generally destroy the nation. Of course, most sophisticates don’t give much currency to such arguments. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying to monetize the phenomenon. Fox News Channel has boosted audiences by narrowcasting to birthers and tea partiers, and it has seen an increase in ads from gold companies (the metal is thought to be a good hedge against Obama destroying the dollar). HarperCollins, another New York-based component of the Murdoch empire, has ordered up a huge printing of Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue. On Tuesday, Peter Lattman, the Wall Street Journal’s sharp private equity reporter, unearthed (subscription required) a more interesting example: the pending initial public offering of gun manufacturer Freedom Group.

Ironically, Freedom Group is a creation of Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm founded and controlled by Stephen Feinberg, a hard-core Republican. It’s been a rough few years for the firm, which bought controlling stakes in Chrysler and GMAC (General Motors’ former lending arm) at the top of the market. In the wake of the financial meltdown, Cerberus’ stake in Chrysler was wiped out as part of the car company’s recapitalization, and its holding in GMAC was trimmed after GMAC was forced to turn to the government for funds. Cerberus didn’t get any special dispensation from the Bush or Obama administrations. But now it seems that Obama’s election has provided Feinberg with an opportunity to recoup some of his recent losses.

By Arran Frood

Conspiracy theorists have used the internet to co-ordinate increasingly slick attacks on the accepted versions of events, but now a group of scientists and sceptics has decided it’s time to organise and fight back.

Conspiracy theories are pervasive and popular.

A poll for the Scripps Howard media organisation in 2006 suggested 36% of Americans suspected government involvement or deliberate inaction in the 9/11 attacks, and belief in a Kennedy conspiracy ran at 40% in the same poll.

A decade after Princess Diana’s death, one survey found a fifth of Britons believed she was murdered. And to millions across the world, 2009’s Apollo Moon landing 40th anniversary was a hollow sham because we have never been there.

Conspiracy theories predate the internet but the web has provided a fast, accessible platform for groups to unite, gather research and disseminate information without even meeting or leaving their houses.

While many people find them harmless fun, others believe there is a darker truth – that conspiracy theories are rewriting history, warping the present and altering the future. Enough is enough they say – it’s time to fight back.

Open your eyes, people: Dan Meth’s latest video was an inside job.

Aug 20th 2009
From The Economist print edition
The perils of losing one’s grip on reality

“Some of Barack Obama’s detractors content themselves with arguing that he is a bad president. Others go further. “Birthers” insist that he was not born in the United States and is therefore constitutionally barred from being president. Yet Mr Obama’s birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, and there is not a shred of evidence to the contrary. There is even an announcement of his birth in the archive of the Honolulu Advertiser, a local newspaper. Yet the internet crackles with theories as to how all this was faked so that, 48 years later, Mr Obama could impose a socialist state on America. And a YouGov poll for The Economist found that 26% of Republicans think Mr Obama is probably foreign-born.

…

But the left is hardly immune to such fantasies. Some people, including Mr Obama’s own former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believe that AIDS was cooked up by the government to kill blacks. A staggering 18% of Americans think that the government of George Bush probably knew in advance about the attacks of September 11th 2001 but allowed them to proceed anyway. Some even contend that Mr Bush orchestrated the attacks himself, to create an excuse for invading Iraq. To believe this, you have to believe that the Bushies were both wicked enough to murder thousands of Americans and brilliant enough to execute such a mind-bogglingly sophisticated plot without a single leak—in a culture where Richard Nixon could not even hush up a burglary.”

August 31, 2009 | Issue 45•36

LEBANON, OHIO—Apollo 11 mission commander and famed astronaut Neil Armstrong shocked reporters at a press conference Monday, announcing he had been convinced that his historic first step on the moon was part of an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the United States government.

According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman’s website, OmissionControl.org.

“It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind’s so-called ‘greatest technological achievement’ for me to realize I had been living a lie, ” said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. “It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico.”

“This is the only logical interpretation of the numerous inconsistencies in the grainy, 40-year-old footage,” Armstrong added.

July 20, 2009 by XUP

Are any of you old enough to remember that moon-landing back in 1969? It’s definitely one of those long-ago things that does NOT seem like it happened just yesterday. That one seems like a least two lifetimes ago.

If it really happened!

Ya, the big Moon Landing is one of the all-time favourites among conspiracy theorists. They’ve done elaborate research on the film footage and stills and reckoned the photographic technology just wasn’t there in 1969 to produce that calibre of film. Not to mention that the technology to land on the moon apparantly wasn’t quite within grasp yet either. But the Americans were afraid the Russians were going to beat them, so they faked the whole thing.

Other great conspiracies include the one that believes the US was behind 9/11. There was a documentary about it called Loose Change that proved why and how. America needed oil and needed a really good reason to invade some oil rich country.

A US spacecraft has captured images of Apollo landing sites on the Moon, revealing hardware and a trail of footprints left on the lunar surface.

The release of the images coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the Moon.