Conspiracism’s Gnostic Roots

In part one of Among the Truthers, Kay provides an informal history of conspiracism, tracing its evolution in Europe and the United-States. Not surprisingly, Kay links the rise of conspiracism in Europe to the rise of Fascism and Communism, both of which were gnostic mass movements that held a particular group (Jews or Capitalists) responsible for devising and carrying out devious, self-interested plots against the masses (the Volk or the proletariat). According to Kay, such plots and conspiracies were embedded in both Far Right and Far Left wing literature, including for example, Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the 20th century and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in the 19th century.

In the United States, conspiracism emerged from somewhat different ideological sources–what Kay terms a “three part mixture” of “religious apocalypticism, political populism, and rapid technological advancement.”(p.33) Even so, this three-part mixture was toxic enough to produce similar results. As in Europe, the United-States saw an increase in literature that pitted corrupt elites against the masses, as well as the onset of what Kay refers to as “flowchart conspiracism” which links all of “America’s power centers, from media companies to drug makers to the CIA, to one central, all controlling secular Anti-Christ.” (p.33)

Of the many conspiracist tracts that emerged, however, there emerged one in particular that, according to Kay, serves as a kind of blueprint for conspiracy theories in general: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The reason why, is that it contains within it a number of themes characteristic of all: singularity, boundless evil, incumbency, greed, hyper-competence, and the logic of cui bono. Singularity, writes Kay, is the “psychic need to impute all evil to a lone, omnipotent source.” (p. 73) Such a source is usually an abstract and sometimes secret group regarded as all knowing and powerful–a “diaboligharchy”–that is both capable of and willing to engage in, boundless acts of evil in order to advance a specific agenda.

Furthermore, such groups are incumbent–that is to say, already embedded within society. In the Protocols, it’s the Jews; however, other and more recent groups include the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg group, and the infamous “neo-cons”¹ (Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Dick Cheney) who are said to have planned and executed 9/11 in order to provide the Bush administration with the pretext for invading Iraq. (Not to omit the Straussians.)

Another theme characteristic of conspiracy theories is greed. Almost always, the diaboligharchy in question is accused of wanting to control “some crucial substance.” (p. 84) “From the nineteenth century onward,” writes Kay, “the hoarding of gold was an especially common theme in conspiracist tracts.” (p. 85) In more recent decades, however, oil has come to replace gold as the crucial substance worth controlling, leading many conspiracists to accuse the American government (and those who staff its halls) of having a perverse desire to control the world’s oil supply. In other words, what was gold to a Jew in the Protocols is now oil to a “neo con” in America.

But make no mistake. Greed neither blurs a cabal’s focus nor detracts from its ability to carry out increasingly complex plots. For many conspiracists, not only is the cabal excessively greedy but hyper-competent in its pursuit. That is to say, diaboligarchies are exceptionally good at being bad–so much so that Machiavelli himself would be impressed. Indeed, “even as the conspiracy theorist imagines a world-controlling cabal that is subhuman in its lack of pity, morality, honesty, and empathy, he is simultaneously awestruck by their superhuman intelligence, ambition, guile, discipline, and singularity of purpose.” (p. 91) And so, whereas the Protocols casts Jews as evil geniuses, today’s 9/11 Truthers cast the neo-cons as first rate intellectuals responsible for duping the entire country into fighting an unnecessary global war on terror. (Note that in the fantasy world of 9/11 Truthers, the only people not duped or part of the duping cabal, are the Truthers themselves.)

Last but not least, conspiracy theories tend to be predicated on the logic of cui bono, or who benefits? Not surprisingly, the authors of the Protocols cast the Jewish people as the beneficiaries. For many conspiracists today, however, it is the military-industrial complex, a cautionary phrase used by President Eisenhower in his farewell address. When Eisenhower referred to the “military-industrial complex” he meant relationships between American corporations and the Pentagon which might lead to excessive expenditures for national defense and undue influence over our society.² However, due to its ambiguity, “military-industrial complex” is a term available to conspiracists of all stripes to describe anyone or any organization that might have benefited, financially or politically, from the happening of an historic and usually tragic event–whether it be an assassination (JFK), a war (Iraq), or a hurricane (see Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine).

Of course, none of this is to say that people don’t benefit from crises. To be sure, history has shown us time and again that for every tragedy there is triumph, for every loss there is a gain. But the fundamental difference between those who recognize this as an inevitable fact of human life and those who believe it can be cured, is an implicit belief on the part of the latter that tragedy is always by design–that is to say, intended. In fact, this is why conspiracy theories, like ideologies, can purport to explain everything. The premise that no outcome is unintended, fundamentally transforms the activity of interpreting reality into systematically explaining it. Put another way, refusing to acknowledge unintended consequences as a real possibility has a way of reducing the activity of philosophizing into the gnostic activity of system building.

For this reason, Kay also focuses on the psychology of conspiracists, and, in part two, provides a typology of those people he regards as most likely to embrace conspiricism. One such personality is that of “The Failed Historian”–a personality common especially among anti-war and anti-nuclear activists, English professors, cultural studies specialists, modern languages professors, and self-proclaimed experts in globalization studies. “For this group, conspiracy theories are a tool to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that arises when the course of human events doesn’t cooperate with the results demanded by their ideology.” (p.162) In thought as in life, old habits die hard, and some die harder than others. This is especially true for the failed historian who, when faced with breaking old habits, breathes new life into old ideas by embracing conspiracism instead.

Another personality prone to conspiracism is that of “The Crank.” The defining feature of anyone who falls into this category, writes Kay, is “an acute, inveterately restless, furiously contrarian intelligence . . . satisfied only once he has personally established the truth of his theories using nothing but primary sources and the rules of logic.” (p.190) In other words, the crank is a sophist determined to set himself apart from the herd, if for no other reason than to set himself apart from the herd–someone who engages in arguments primarily for the sake of winning and for the sake of nothing else (think Callicles in Gorgias). “Many of the Truther cranks I’ve interviewed” writes Kay “treated the issue of 9/11 Truth as a debating exercise, and seemed curiously detached from the profoundly disturbing implications that flow from their claims.” (p.190)

Of course, what separates conspiracists from one another is less important than what distinguishes them as conspiracists in the first place. Like gnostics, conspiracists of all stripes tend to exhibit a number of recognizable symptoms. In his Science, Politics and Gnosticism, for instance, Voegelin points out that gnostics tend to be fundamentally dissatisfied with their situation. (p. 64) So too is the conspiracist. In fact, of the many conspiracy theorists named in Among the Truthers, the vast majority of them admit to having experienced a “sickness or debilitating emotional agony that they blame on being suddenly exposed to the magnitude of evil threatening the world.” (p.217) Moreover, like gnostics, many conspiracists believe that their dissatisfaction “can be attributed to the fact that the world is intrinsically poorly organized.” (Voegelin, p. 64)

Take, for example, 9/11 Truthers. Underlying the belief that 9/11 was an inside job is usually a more general one that holds the United States and its empire accountable for all of the evil and injustice in the world.  Whereas the particular issue of 9/11 truth serves as an outlet for expressing resentment towards American foreign policy in general, American foreign policy serves as an outlet for expressing resentment towards a poorly organized world or international system. When taken into account, the fact that many of America’s most outspoken enemies are also self-professed 9/11 Truthers (including, for example, President Amadenajad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Col. Qaddafi of Libya) comes as no surprise.

It follows that salvation from such a world necessarily involves denouncing, challenging, and ultimately resisting American empire. Like the gnostic belief that “a change in the order of being lies in the realm of human action,” 9/11 Truthers subscribe to the belief that a change in public opinion will force the American government to suddenly reveal the hidden truth about 9/11 and in so doing usher in a new age of transparency, accountability, and global justice. By raising America’s conscience, by revealing the “truth and lies behind 9/11” (as a professor at my own university has called it), justice will prevail.

Not surprisingly, those who question such noble intentions, those who oppose their conspiracist project, are automatically labeled as part of the problem, establishment, or diaboligharchy, and therefore seen as either inherently unjust or ignorant. “Like fundamentalists and cult members,” writes Kay, “Truther activists tend to observe a rigid distinction between believers and infidels–between those with the courage to embrace the Truth and those who prefer to wallow in ignorance. As with Marxists who accuse nonbelievers of inhabiting a “false consciousness,” many Truthers see non-Truther “sheepler” as not merely misinformed, but mentally deficient in some very basic way.” (p. 215)

In the third and final part of Among the Truthers, Kay attempts to explain how and why conspiracism has become so successful at replacing truth with untruth, fact with fiction, reality with fantasy. For Kay, it comes down to three contemporary phenomena: “the rise of information technology, widespread access to higher education, and the enshrinement of tolerance and diversity as state-sanctioned secular creeds.” (p. 223) According to Kay, the rise of information technology fundamentally transformed conspiracism. Whereas technology that predated the Internet kept it somewhat at bay (keeping each conspiracy theorist, writes Kay, “a unique movement unto himself” (p. 228)), the growth of the World Wide Web gave conspiracy theorists a platform from which they could, and now do, communicate their theories to a worldwide audience. It turns out that a world with access to unlimited information does not necessarily make for a world informed by truth. Men still inhabit Plato’s cave. The only difference is that the cave now includes cyberspace.

Another contemporary phenomenon responsible for the proliferation of conspiracism is widespread access to higher education, by which Kay actually means widespread access to an education in deconstructionism and modern identity politics. According to Kay, whereas “deconstructionism was the ideal smokescreen for scholars and activists peddling counterfactual interpretations of the world,” modern identity politics replaced the “historian’s once unquestioned goal of objective truth with an explicitly political, Marxist-leaning agenda aimed at empowerment and solidarity building.” (p.264-265) Indeed, because almost no interpretation of history could be declared objectively wrong, almost any worldview could be understood as subjectively right. It was therefore only a matter of time before consipiracism found its way into the classroom, presenting itself as an equally plausible, if not valid interpretation of history.

That both of these phenomena have contributed to the proliferation of conspiracism is not surprising. They shed considerable light on how conspiracy theories have managed to take hold in minds of a growing number of people, not only in the West but also around the world. Less clear, however, is if they answer the why. Why, for instance, do conspiracy theories, regardless of the medium used to present and communicate them, or the setting in which they find the most support, continue to thrive–especially in post-enlightenment, supposedly rational societies?

To be sure, part of the answer lies in modernity’s turn towards deconstructionism, nihilism, and the adoption of state-sanctioned secular creeds. But as Plato demonstrates in Book Nine of the Republic, and as Voegelin discusses in his Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, the corruption of reason and rationality, of the intellect, predates modernity and the modern administrative state as a phenomenon and is something to which all humans, regardless of time or place, have remained susceptible. Whereas Plato refers to it in terms of a tyrant overcome by “unnecessary desires,” and who, as a result, acts on dreams while being awake (574d-575a), Voegelin refers to it in terms of a thinker, who, on account of his libido dominandi or lust for domination, yearns to remake the world in his image.

Whatever its cause, it turns out that Kay’s underlying concern of why certain people opt for fantasy over reality is reflective of a concern that both Plato and Voegelin expressed before him, rendering his journey into America’s conspiracist underground a more contemporary journey into the heart of spiritual darkness characteristic of a tyrant and gnostic alike. The only question that remains is whether or not today’s 9/11 Truthers will become as determined as yesterday’s gnostics when it comes to changing the order of being in which we live, by trying to impose on the rest of us the “truth” as they see it. Let’s hope not.

Notes