Elite Theory as the Intellectual Basis of Conspiracy Theory
Thus far conspiracy theory has been defined by those who have an interest in delegitimizing it. It is overdue to be redefined in a rigorous manner and to receive recognition as a branch of sociology.
The term “conspiracy theory” goes back to the late 19th century. Its use became more common after it was discussed by Karl Popper in his 1945 book The Open Society and its Enemies. In his book Popper describes and disparages the “conspiracy theory of society”, which holds that “whatever happens in society—especially happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people as a rule dislike—is the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups.”[1] He claims this belief is widely held, and it is clear that at that the time of publication “conspiracy theory” did not carry the connotation of being ludicrous and absurd, as it does today. The stigmatization of conspiracy theories began in the 1960s, as did use of the term “conspiracy theorist”. This was in large part a response to criticisms of the Warren Commission report into the assassination of JFK1, as is demonstrated by a CIA document describing how its propaganda assets could attack the claims of critics. Some suggested strategies include claiming that those promoting alternative theories were politically or financially motivated, or that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists”. These same techniques still see widespread use today to censure anti-mainstream narratives.
Despite Popper’s condemnation and the CIA’s blackwashing of conspiracy theory, it is in fact a fruitful area of inquiry. Conspiracy theory, done properly, (and here I use the word theory in the same sense as it occurs in number theory or evolutionary theory) is a subfield of the sociological discipline of elite theory. Elite theory describes the structure of power relations in society. It maintains that a small minority of elites hold the majority of economic, cultural, and political power, and hence also wield the majority of influence generally, regardless of democratic institutions. Elite theory stands opposed to pluralist theories that assert that power relations can be understood as networks of diverse interests competing through the framework of government. Two influential elite theorists were Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923) and Robert Michels (1878 - 1936). Pareto popularized the term “elite” in sociological analysis, and made the empirical discovery that a small number of people control the majority of the wealth in a nation (called the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule). Michels developed the Iron Law of Oligarchy, which states that all complex organizations eventually develop into oligarchies, even if they were founded as democratic institutions.
Conspiracy theory studies the actions of elites and the consequences thereof, focusing particularly on situations involving subterfuge or deceit, and especially where the activity is immoral or illegal. It is not at all unreasonable to assert a priori that elites (or people in general) may carry out acts that benefit themselves at the expense of others, or that they may subsequently lie about it. In fact, a conspiracy is, by definition, a group of people with shared incentives cooperating to perpetrate illegal or immoral acts. Secrecy or outright deception is necessary due to the illicit nature of conspiracy, and elites are most able and incentivized to enter into conspiracies due to forming a concentrated interest group2 with considerable influence over outcomes in society. Elites have been criminally indicted for conspiracy in the past, as in the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, when oil and automotive companies, and their corporate directors, were charged with conspiring to form a transportation monopoly3. Not all conspiracy theories are true, of course, but even those that are most misguided – such as that the Earth is flat or that the elites are really shape-shifting reptilians – still conform to this central theme. In the case of Flat Earthism, the theory holds that we have been deceived about the shape of the Earth by the elites in order to promote scientific materialism by which we may be more easily controlled. In the case of the reptilians theory, we have been deceived by the elites about their very nature, which would, logically, prevent us from understanding and resisting their schemes. Although these particular theories are wrong, the field of conspiracy theory is still quite instructive.
One common criticism that is raised at this juncture is that it is paranoid to believe that elites are engaged in schemes to harm the public, or that they would care to do so. However this is not without precedent, either historically or in the present day. Indeed, elites frequently evince disdain for the public. In book 5 of his Politics, Aristotle describes oligarchic groups in Greece that take the vow "And I will be hostile to the people and will plan whatever evil I can against them".[2] A more modern quote comes from banker David Lang, speaking on environmental and economic policy at the 4th World Wilderness Conference held in Denver in 1987: "I suggest therefore that this be sold not through a democratic process, that would take too long and devour far too much of the funds to educate the cannon fodder, unfortunately, which populates the Earth." This quote is emblematic, because it involves not only utter contempt for the public, but a call to use coercive or deceptive methods to achieve the elite's desired ends.
In light of the above discussion, one key phenomenon that can be explained by conspiracy theory is that of controlled opposition. If elites in society wish for a change of any kind to take place, they are almost guaranteed to encounter opposition in the populace. To ensure that the change progresses unimpeded, this opposition must be controlled, corralled, disparaged, ridiculed, misrepresented, or otherwise neutralized. Often this comes in the form of opposition thought leaders who are elevated to prominence by the media (itself controlled by elites) who are secretly working in support of the agenda. Noam Chomsky describes how the promotion of dissenting views can serve to reinforce the status quo:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.[3]
Once thought leaders are in place and have acquired a following among the dissenters in the population, various means can be employed to produce the desired result. The personalities can employ weakened arguments against the opposing position, can misdirect as to the real causes and reasons for the changes being played out, or can become embroiled in scandal, tarnishing their ideas by association. In all cases the goal is the same: that the agenda is able to unfold with minimal accommodations for the desires of the masses. This same phenomenon can also play out with approved opposition instead of directly controlled opposition, wherein organic opposition that does not really threaten the elite’s agenda is allowed to exist or even be promoted. It is safer, however, when the opposition figureheads are directly controlled, as it can be assured that they will not go off script and say something damaging to the agenda.
Controlled opposition can also function through the creation or infiltration of dissident groups, in order to manage them and limit their effectiveness. The need for controlled opposition was well recognized by Communist elites:
Both Marx and Lenin emphasized the need for and prophesied the emergence of what Communist ideology terms the “controlled opposition.” Under such a concept opposition parties are permitted to continue in existence, to publish their own newspapers, to make their own speeches, and to propose their own slates of candidates. The crucial difference is, however, that the coalition formed in the second stage is a sham. Newspapers are subject to strictest control, speakers are censored and harassed or even arrested for deviation from the prescribed Communist party line, and slates of candidates are set up only with prior Communist approval.[4]
There are many cases of such groups in the Soviet era. One example, Operation Trust, was an operation conducted by the Soviet intelligence agencies which created a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization. Trust used standard counterintelligence techniques that are still employed today to control opposition movements, like setting up front companies and seeking out and spreading disinformation to dissenters.
In the US intelligence agencies have been equally active in controlling opposition to the elites. Pinkerton is a still-existing private detective agency founded in 1850 by Freemasons Allan Pinkerton and Edward Rucker. Pinkerton later went on to head the Union intelligence service during the Civil War. The Pinkertons were notorious for their strikebreaking operations, working against labour on behalf of industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. Alongside their strikebreaking work they were also involved in infiltrating unions and worker’s groups in order to neutralize them. One such group was the Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society acting on behalf of coal miners in Pennsylvania, which was infiltrated by Pinkerton detective James McParlan. The Molly Maguires ceased to be active after trials where suspected members of the organization were convicted of murder and executed. The reality may be, however, that the Molly Maguires were fabricated by the very people they were supposedly resisting. Historian Joseph Rayback writes:
The charge has been made that the Molly Maguires episode was deliberately manufactured by the coal operators with the express purpose of destroying all vestiges of unionism in the area [...] There is some evidence to support the charge [...] the "crime wave" that appeared in the anthracite fields came after the appearance of the Pinkertons, and [...] many of the victims of the crimes were union leaders and ordinary miners. The evidence brought against [the defendants], supplied by James McParlan, a Pinkerton, and corroborated by men who were granted immunity for their own crimes, was tortuous and contradictory, but the net effect was damning [...] The trial temporarily destroyed the last vestiges of labor unionism in the anthracite area. More important, it gave the public the impression [...] that miners were by nature criminal in character.[5]
Many other examples of elites employing covert techniques to infiltrate, destabilize, and control workers can be cited, and Wikipedia hosts a lengthy article detailing examples and implicating at least 12 organizations, just in the United States. More recently, similar strategies were employed by the FBI in their operation COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) which according to official documents (that is, according to the perpetrators) ran from 1956 to 1971. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize”[6] activities of dissident organizations, for instance, civil rights activists, environmentalists, animal rights groups, and anti-war protesters. One of the primary goals of the program was “maintaining the existing social and political order” at a time when it was being resisted by diverse grassroots groups.
Controlled opposition fits under the purview of conspiracy theory because it involves deliberate action, involving deception, to facilitate the schemes of the elite. Although theoretically anyone could employ such a ploy, the resources required to set up fake organizations, hire frontmen, and control the media ensures that only the kind of concentrated power found in the societal ruling class could successfully pull off such a gambit.
Today, controlling the opposition continues to be in the wheelhouse of the intelligence agencies, acting in the interests of the elite class. Controlled opposition is even used against the concept of conspiracy itself, by promoting to the public’s attention only the most asinine and egregiously wrong conspiracy theories, such as the aforementioned Flat Earth or reptilian shapeshifter theories. Using a few well-placed mouthpieces, Western intelligence agencies can spread disinformation in anti-government (that is, anti-elite) circles, then use the media to spotlight that disinformation in order to discredit anti-government ideas generally. The public eventually learns to associate non-mainstream criticism of ruling elites with the “lunatic fringe” and throw out the good with the bad. Theodore Roosevelt said in his autobiography: “Then, among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it — the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.”[7] What he neglected to mention was that the lunatic fringe is in many cases graciously supplied or bolstered by elites like himself.
Besides controlling the opposition, elites employ a broad swath of social engineering techniques in order to render the public more easily exploitable. The ruling class, compromising a small minority of the population, is not able to achieve great wealth and power purely (or even primarily) through its own effort. The vast majority of the wealth of the ruling class is extracted from those lower in the social hierarchy. Thus, it is in the interest of the elites to be able to extract as much wealth as efficiently as possible, and with minimal resistance. This idea, taken by itself, may simply be considered an aspect of elite theory. Conspiracy becomes relevant when the elites use deceit or propaganda to achieve the goal of making the population more exploitable.
Today, it would likely be considered a conspiracy theory in the pejorative sense to suggest that foundational elements of the culture were put in place deliberately by the elites in order to make the population easier to control. Certainly, tying this idea to contentious issues like vaccination or gender politics would immediately elicit cries of “conspiracy theory” in the popular media. And yet it is a conspiracy theory, and a true fact, that elites have subverted the culture in order to make people more docile and compliant.
Perhaps no other individual stands as better proof of that fact than Edward Bernays. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was the self-styled father of public relations, and wrote the book (literally, in 1928) on Propaganda. In it, he writes “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”[8] Bernays was undeniably one of the elite: coming from a prominent family; obtaining great personal wealth; and working with US presidents, leading industrialists, Hollywood celebrities, and the CIA. Among his achievements were making it socially acceptable for women to smoke, promoting water fluoridation, and engineering consent for the 1954 CIA-sponsored Guatemalan coup. In fact, he also wrote the book on The Engineering of Consent in 1955.
Bernays was influenced by Freud’s idea that people’s behaviours were shaped by irrational, unconscious forces. His central insight was that these forces could be manipulated by psychologists not only to make money, but to make people more passive and controllable. Bernays thought that by stimulating the desires of the public, and then sating them with consumer products, the behaviours of the masses could be managed. Prominent business interests were on board, with Lehman Brothers investment banker Paul Mazur saying “We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”4 President Hoover considered the project a great success, and in 1928 told a group of advertisers "You have taken over the job of creating desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines.”
This kind of mass manipulation was made possible by the advent of mass media, which enabled the industrialization of propaganda, spinning, and lying. Of course, the development of new technologies of social control did not stop in the 1950’s. The CIA’s declassified MKUltra program ran (officially) from 1953 to 1973 and investigated psychological and pharmacological techniques for brainwashing and mind control. Like the previously mentioned Soviet Operation Trust, MKUltra operated through front organizations, where top officials were aware of the CIA’s involvement. One of these officials was Donald Ewan Cameron, who was the president of several important psychiatric institutions, including the American, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Associations. Cameron helped the CIA to develop psychological torture techniques like psychic driving, which sought to replace the subject’s natural psychological impulses with drives suggested by the practitioner. Other declassified documents in the book Acid Dreams demonstrate how the MKUltra research on LSD was weaponized against the hippy/anti-war movements of the 1960s in order to neutralize it as a threat to the American political establishment then waging a war in Vietnam.
More recently, techniques from behavioural psychology have been used to increase compliance with government orders during the COVID-19 lockdowns. According to one scientist on the UK’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.” Another member of the group described being “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology.” In the US, directors of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA, partnered with academics to develop techniques to “advance public [...] acceptance of vaccines” through application of the social, behavioural, and communication sciences. Among the recommendations are to partner with trusted local institutions (like churches or community centers) to “establish vaccination sites that will be accessible and feel safe” and to “crowd out misinformation” by engaging “trusted community spokespersons [...] to amplify vaccine-affirming, personally relevant messages”.
Control of populations through psychological means has also advanced into new paradigms of control. Beyond psychological warfare or information warfare the nascent field of cognitive warfare aims to alter the very cognition of human targets. According to François du Cluzel, who manages cognitive warfare research at the NATO Innovation Hub, “It’s not only an action against what we think, but also an action against the way we think, the way we process information and turn it into knowledge.” Speaking at a NATO panel discussion on the topic, du Cluzel noted that “Its field of action is global and aim to seize control of the human being, civilian as well as military.” An official NATO report authored by du Cluzel is explicit that “the objective of Cognitive Warfare is to harm societies and not only the military.” (pg. 32). The report also describes cognitive warfare as the “militarisation of brain science” and dependant on recent advances in NBIC: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. Speaking in the panel discussion, Canadian lieutenant colonel Marie-Pierre Raymond notes “cognitive warfare is the most advanced form of manipulation seen to date.” The NATO reports are couched in terms of using cognitive warfare techniques on military enemies, however historical precedent (including aforementioned events) demonstrates that it is certain it will be used on domestic populations as well. Recent history also bears this out, with Canadians being subject to domestic military propaganda campaigns during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
As has been seen so far, and will continue to be shown, the military and intelligence communities are often key players in elite conspiracies. There are several reasons for this, the most important of which is that it is elites that control the military (and intelligence) and give them their directives. This can be seen in the case of the Pinkertons, who functioned as private intelligence and mercenaries working for the industrialists, as well as the history of heads of state, many of whom were generals, and some of whom were intelligence officers or directors, including George H W Bush and Vladimir Putin. This fact, when combined with the strict hierarchy of the military, means that military and intelligence officers are directly under the control of the elites, moreso than in other fields. Military and intelligence also often operate in a clandestine manner, which is directly conducive to carrying out conspiratorial acts. The strict hierarchy means that the lower ranks in these kinds of organizations often act without full information as to what they are doing. This lack of full information, combined with the expectation to obey orders, makes such personnel effective cat’s-paws for their elite controllers. This is further amplified by the fact that military officers are already prepared to carry out immoral acts (e.g. killing people) with the justification that they are doing it to “serve their country”.
Another subject of inquiry central to conspiracy theory is that of faked or manufactured events. The historical possibility of such fabrications is attested to by Orwell, in his essay Looking Back on the Spanish War:
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
Such events can take many forms: false flags, where an entity attacks itself while pretending to be another, to justify retaliation; staged events, where actors simulate a real event to deceive onlookers; or hoaxes, where an event is fabricated from whole cloth and only occurred on paper. Note that these are not hard and fast categories, as events can be orchestrated at different levels and through various means. Events may be manufactured for a variety of reasons, for instance to justify increased public spending (that is, wealth transfer from taxpayers to elites), or as psychological warfare to create a desired emotional atmosphere, often fear. Most often however, the goal of manufactured events is to create a situation whereby elites can parlay the public’s emotional response into implementing a pre-planned solution in line with their agenda.
In the category of manufactured events we will start by looking at false flags. The term originates from the practice in medieval naval warfare of flying a flag of a foreign country instead of your own in order to evade enemy vessels, or to get closer than would otherwise be possible before attacking. In contemporary parlance the term now refers to deliberately creating an event in such a way that another party can be scapegoated for it, often justifying military action against that party. There are many historical examples of false flags admitted by the mainstream, the earliest being the false flag that preceded the 1788 Russo-Swedish war. The Swedish king at the time, Gustav III, wished to start a war with Russia, but needed a pretext to do so. To that end, an attack was staged by the Swedes against Puumala, a Swedish town near the border with Russia, using Russian military uniforms that had been sewn for that purpose. The uproar following the event was used to justify the ensuing war.
More recent false flags include those conducted in Europe as part of the CIA’s Operation Gladio. Forming in the aftermath of WWII, the stated purpose of Gladio was to establish networks of operatives that would act as stay-behind forces in the event of a communist takeover of Europe. The CIA cooperated with and funded European intelligence agencies as part of the operation. The existence of Gladio was finally revealed to the public through the parliamentary testimony of Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti on August 3, 1990, more than 40 years since it had begun operating. Parliamentary inquiries have also been held in Belgium and Switzerland, and declassified documents and admissions prove that the stay-behind network operated across Europe in at least 10 countries. In Italy, where the most information has been revealed, Gladio has been implicated in numerous bombings, including the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano bombing, and the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing. The bombings were part of a “strategy of tension” intended to shift the political climate in Italy. According to General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of Italian military counter-intelligence, “The CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism.” Judge Gerardo D'Ambrosio, the investigating magistrate of the Piazza Fontana bombing explains: "The first stage was to make attacks that would be blamed on the Left. The second stage was actual infiltration of groups on the Left, inducing these extra-parliamentary groups to carry out attacks. These groups were instrumental in increasing the social and political tension in the country."
Speaking in a 1992 BBC Documentary, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of the right-wing Ordine Nuovo group, states that the purpose of the strategy of tension was “To force the Italian public to turn to the State, turn to the regime and ask for greater security [...] they had to get people to accept that at any moment over a period of thirty years, from 1960 to the mid-eighties, a State of Emergency could be declared. So, people would willingly trade part of their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This is the political logic behind all the bombings.” Later in the documentary he also notes that three of the central suspects in the Piazza Fontana investigation were in the employ of Italian intelligence. Vinciguerra was himself convicted in the Peteano bombing, where it was found that the explosives employed originated from a Gladio arms cache.
On the other hand there are also hoaxes, where events are reported to have happened that never occurred. The use of hoaxes by intelligence agencies and PR firms to manipulate people is an important subject that is almost entirely absent in mainstream discourse, except as an object of derision. Where hoaxes can be used they may be preferred to real operations as they are less expensive and have fewer points of failure. All that is required is a compliant media and a credulous public. They can be planned and wargamed in advance, and it is guaranteed that all actors involved will stick to their roles.
One example was the Nayirah testimony, given by 15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. In her testimony in support of Kuwait in the Gulf war, she claimed “While I was [at a Kuwaiti hospital], I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying.” The testimony was widely publicized, and corroborated by reporting by Amnesty International. Politically, the testimony was cited repeatedly by George Bush and several US senators to justify support for the US military’s Operation Desert Storm. Two years later it was revealed that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, that her testimony was organized by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, and that the story of taking premature babies out of incubators was entirely false. While a superficial analysis may suggest that Kuwait was the beneficiary of the false testimony, the close ties between Hill & Knowlton and the US government (Craig Fuller, the head of Hill & Knowlton’s domestic operations, was Chief of Staff to George H W Bush when he was Vice President) indicates the real beneficiaries were the military-industrial complex and its associated elites.
Another operation combining propaganda, psychological warfare, and hoaxes was the aforementioned 1954 coup against Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had expropriated uncultivated land held by the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and redistributed it to impoverished peasants. Although landowners were compensated by government bonds based on the value of the land the landowners had themselves reported for tax purposes, this was deemed inadequate by UFCO. In response, Edward Bernays, who worked PR for UFCO, started a campaign to convince the American public that Arbenz’s government represented a Communist beachhead in North America. Thomas McCann, former Vice President of UFCO, writes in his book An American Company: the Tragedy of United Fruit that “The core of Bernays’s strategy was the selection of the most influential communications media in America [...] followed by a high-level saturation campaign to expose those media’s reporters to the company’s version of the facts.” United Fruit ran guided press tours of the region, about which McCann states “The trips were ostensibly to gather information, but what the press would hear and see was carefully staged and regulated by the host.” Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, was given one of the first tours, at which time “the first “Communist riot” took place in the capital.” The media was superlatively compliant: "It is difficult to make a convincing case for manipulation of the press when the victims proved so eager for the experience.”[9]
What ensued was a CIA coup against Arbenz, dubbed Operation PBSuccess. Both CIA Director Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles were UFCO shareholders. John Dulles was Secretary of State, and had previously worked for the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented United Fruit. According to Harvard historian John Coatsworth, “every policymaking official involved in the decision to overthrow the Guatemalan government, except for President Eisenhower himself, had a family or business connection to UFCO.” The CIA operation, with an official taxpayer-funded budget of $2.7 million, amounted to a massive hoax on the entire country of Guatemala. Using tapes pre-recorded in Florida, the CIA sent out a broadcast of “Radio Liberación”, alleging to be the media arm of a coalition mounting a rebellion against the presidency of the “Communist traitor” Arbenz. Through the broadcast, citizens of Guatemala were informed – falsely – that an anti-Communist “Liberation Army” was marching on the capital, that the Guatemalan military was defecting to join the rebels, and that the president had ordered anti-Communist demonstrators found in the city be rounded up. The CIA hired pilots to fly over Guatemala City and drop pamphlets encouraging residents to flee or shelter in their homes. The result of the operation, which according to Allen Dulles was “more dependent upon psychological impact rather than actual military strength,” was the ousting of Arbenz and his replacement by CIA-supported Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. McCann writes about how the coup was sold to the American public using misrepresented atrocity photos:
The incident even produced some reasonably believable atrocity pictures. I don't know where they came from, but somehow we got hold of some photographs of several bodies – some had been castrated – about to be buried in a mass grave. The photos got the widest possible circulation and Arbenz got all the credit. For all I know, they could just as easily have been the victims of either side – or of an earthquake. The point is, they were widely accepted for what they were purported to be – victims of communism.[10]
The Guatemalan coup is a classic example of deception on a massive, international scale, carried out by colluding business, government, and intelligence elites. The success of the operation is compelling proof of the power hoaxes to manipulate the public, and of intelligence agencies to organize complex deceptions.
In choosing the examples for this section I have chosen events that are acknowledged by the mainstream to be manufactured, but there is extensive research that has not been allowed to penetrate the mainstream showing that many more events have been faked. Since these topics enter the mainstream when they are publicly admitted or declassified, it follows that any conspiracies that have not entered into the public record in this way would be strenuously denied. It is not credible to suggest that all conspiracies past and present have been admitted to, and thus there must be conspiracies that are presently denied that could be uncovered through critical review of evidence.
Although the three areas already mentioned are particular particularly important to conspiracy theory, areas like propaganda, elite genealogies, revisionist history, scientific criticism, and social criticism are also explored. In the latter three categories, it involves identifying ways in which elite interests have corrupted history, science, or the social fabric for their own ends. When this is admitted, as with the false flag that launched the 1788 Russo-Swedish War, Lysenkoist biology in the Soviet Union, or the eugenical notion that elite status indicates genetic superiority5, then it is simply considered history. When these explanations are denied by mainstream power brokers, then it is considered conspiracy theory. Nonetheless, this essay has focused on controlled opposition, social engineering, and manufactured events as these are more specific to the study of conspiracy theory.
To return to Popper’s previously mentioned critique of the conspiracy theory of society, it is obviously absurd to suggest that all happenings in society are the result of direct elite action.6 However it is equally absurd to ignore that elites, their agendas, and the conspiracies to enact those agendas can dramatically influence how society evolves. Even when certain outcomes are not the direct result of elite actions, elites may still be responsible for creating the conditions which allow for certain events to occur. One historical example is the Great Depression, which former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has admitted was caused by the actions of the elites then running that institution.7 In other cases, elites may use their powers to create an incentive structure that brings about negative outcomes. In these cases it is the interaction between the elites (setting the incentive) and the masses (following the incentive) that produces the result. One such example is no-fault divorce in the US. Subsequent to states allowing for unilateral, no-fault divorce in the 1970’s, divorce rates shot up and have remained high.
Of course, it is not always possible to predict all outcomes that may result from actions or incentives, and so unpopular outcomes may be framed as unintended consequences of well-intended actions. Conspiracy theory attempts to identify the individuals and interest groups that may be responsible for such outcomes, understand the mechanisms through which they came about, and determine the incentives driving the actors and how they benefited from the results. If deliberate collusion and conspiracy cannot be proven through documentary evidence (as in circumstances where evidence has been hidden, lost, falsified, or deliberately destroyed), then it may be inferred by building a strong chain of circumstantial evidence. This does however mean that the failure mode of conspiracy theory is to mistakenly identify agency in phenomena that were genuinely organic or coincidental. In contrast, mainstream sociology often fails to recognize the role of agentic behaviour in shaping social change, even when it exists.
Another common critique of conspiracy theory is that elites are not a homogeneous group, and therefore they cannot as a group pursue deliberate strategies to exploit the masses. While it is true that elites in different domains may have incentives that put them at odds, they still share ruling class incentives to maintain their position at the top of the social hierarchy. Although Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller may have at one time been rivals,8 they both employed similar tactics to keep their workers in line, and both made use of the Pinkerton detectives. Even when there are upheavals among the elite, as during the industrial revolution when the dominant ruling class strategy transitioned from aristocratic lords to industrialist robber barons (bankers remaining powerful throughout), the net effect was simply that the masses were exploited under a slightly different system than before. Many elite families managed this transition in strategy with their power intact: for instance the Dutch royal family helped found Royal Dutch Petroleum (now Royal Dutch Shell) and later Queen Wilhelmina became the first acknowledged female billionaire.
Even if groups of elites are not convening to discuss ways to increase their power at the expense of the masses (although there are plenty of historical examples of this9) the actions of the elite in aggregate still produce this result. The exception to this rule is when raising up the masses in some way serves to protect against revolutionary sentiment or to provide a greater future return (human capital investment). For instance, Horace Mann, one of the first and most prominent educationists promoting public schooling in America, said education “disarm[s] the poor of their hostility towards the rich” and “adds a thousand fold more to a nation's resources than the most successful conquests”.[11] This is similar to an aspect of Fordism, whereby workers are paid a “living wage” that allows them to become consumers of the products they produce, while also improving productivity and reducing turnover. The obverse to this point is that if societal elites are too successful at dominating the lower classes, they risk destabilizing and destroying the source of their wealth, committing “suicide by success”. Members of the elite may thus at times deliberately promote resistance among the masses in order to push society towards a more stable equilibrium, or else away from competing elite schemes they view as detrimental long-term.
Currently in the common vernacular “conspiracy theory” is whatever ideas the Western ruling class has deemed damaging to their agenda. Consequently, the idea that there was a secret plot led by Osama bin Laden to attack America on 9/11 is not a conspiracy theory, despite involving a conspiracy, while the idea that American elites conspired to carry out a controlled demolition of the World Trade Center in order to create the appearance of a terrorist attack and justify going to war is considered a conspiracy theory. The difference is that one narrative is hostile to Western elites, while the other is favourable to, and propounded by, those same elites. The goal of this paper is to demarcate conspiracy theory as a field of inquiry, to separate it from these kinds of political concerns. Note that under this rubric, the al Qaeda theory of 9/11 still does not fall within the scope of conspiracy theory, just as one tribe launching a surprise attack on their neighbour would not.10 The inside job theory of 9/11 does however qualify as a conspiracy, as it involves elites harming and gaslighting the public for nefarious ends. This definition also serves to exclude topics like the existence of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, or whether aliens built the pyramids, as these are generally pulp “conspiracy candy” serving to titillate the reader, as opposed to seriously investigating how elite interests shape society at the expense of the masses.
Conspiracy theory, though not a cohesive body of knowledge, and lacking generalized standards of evidence, has nonetheless developed a large body of literature over the past 50 years. Varieties of research range from quantitative geopolitical analyses, to book length revisionist history based on archival documents, to analyses based on identifying falsified images or videos. The most salient way that conspiracy theory differs from other fields of inquiry is its focus on the fabrication of evidence. To take a brief detour into science, it is now known that Harvard behavioural scientist Francesca Gino falsified her research. However this was only proven because she left traces of the falsification in the data sets, which was later uncovered by other researchers. We may simply ask the question, if she had more competently covered up her tracks, how would we have been able to know that the data was fake? This is a central question in conspiracy theory, and while different methods exist to make such a case, no rigorous standard of evidence has yet been developed. It is also unfortunate, because making such a case may require making connections that would not be universally accepted11. It is also, unfortunately, the case that accepting a conspiracy theory may at first result in a less parsimonious or consistent world model, even if the theory is true. This is because a no-conspiracy world model represents a local minimum in explanation-space, and to accept a conspiracy theory requires exiting that local minimum. It would only be after accepting multiple conspiracies (or the existence, prevalence, and variety of conspiracies more generally) that the world model begins to represent an improvement over the no-conspiracy model. This is one explanation of the positive manifold of positive correlations between different conspiracy theories. A similar process is true of many paradigm shifts, scientific or otherwise, including that from a pluralism-based model to an elite theory-based model.
Despite being a frequently derided field, it is clear that conspiracy theory avails itself of new tools to answer questions that other fields are not equipped or willing to address. As it continues to mature and attract more attention its methods and conclusions will no doubt improve through critical debate. Thus far conspiracy theory has been defined by those who have an interest in delegitimizing it. It is overdue to be defined in a rigorous manner and to receive recognition as a branch of sociology with substantial predictive power.
References:
Popper, K. (2015). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Routledge. p. 306
Aristotle. (1944). Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21 (H. Rackham, Trans.). Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd.
Chomsky, N., Barsamian, D. (1998). The common good. Odonian Press. p. 43
Nevada Studies in History and Political Science. (1961). University of Nevada Press. p. 34
Rayback, J. G. (1959). A History of American Labor. Macmillan. p. 133
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: Supplementary detailed staff reports on intelligence activities and the rights of Americans. (1976). United States: U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 19
Roosevelt, T. (1899). The Rough Riders: An Autobiography. Library of America. p. 461
Bernays, Edward (1928). Propaganda. Ig Publishing. ISBN 0970312598. p. 9
McCann, T. P. (1976). An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit. Crown Publishers. p. 46-47
McCann p. 60
The case for public schools. (n.d.) The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved Dec 13 2022 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+case+for+public+schools.-a016706078
Gilens, M., & Page, B. (2014). Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564-581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595
Hawke, D. F. (1980). John D.: the founding father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper & Row. p. 210
Sparkes, B., Vanderlip, F. A. (1935). From Farm Boy to Financier. D. Appleton-Century Company, incorporated.
The Warren Commission report, made public on September 27, 1964, concluded that JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. In spite of the report, a majority of Americans have always believed there was a conspiracy.
As interest groups – studied in public choice theory – vary in size, they face different costs and benefits of organizing. Large interest groups, for instance the general public, face large costs in organizing, and when a goal is attained the benefits are diffused over the group, benefiting each individual only a small amount. Small interest groups, on the other hand, have much lower costs of organizing, and the benefits are concentrated over a few individuals. Elites in any society form a concentrated interest group with shared incentives to extract wealth from the general citizenry. The citizenry is a diffused interest group where the benefits of resisting elite predation may not outweigh the costs of doing so at an individual level, even if there is a net benefit at the group level. Empirical research on US policy decisions demonstrates that elites and special interest groups have substantial impact on government policy, while ordinary citizens have little to none.[12]
Some of the companies involved were Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone Tire, GM, and Mack Trucks. The defendants were convicted of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to subsidiaries of National City Lines (NCL), which received funding from the defendants. NCL was engaged in buying up local electric streetcar systems across America, and by 1947 controlled 46 systems across 16 states. NCL subsequently shut down the streetcars and demolished the track infrastructure they relied on, which has had a substantial and lasting impact on the American public transportation system.
This quote is attributed to an article by Mazur in a 1927 edition of The Harvard Business Review. Although it is clear by his other writings that Mazur would have agreed with this quote, some consider it to be aprocryphal. The quote has been sufficiently used, by elites and in mainstream publications, that I feel it permissible to use it here, with this caveat.
The idea from eugenics that the elites are genetically superior to the general population, as proven by their wealth and status, is remarkably similar to the idea from the Protestant prosperity gospel that the rich are favoured by God as proven by their wealth. Eugenics is, in this sense, a self-serving justification for elite rule in the scientific era, as the prosperity gospel/Protestant work ethic was in the industrial era, and the divine right of kings was in the monarchical era.
In fact it is essentially strawmanning the cogent and well-substantiated conspiracy theoretic position, a tactic that might be employed by someone attempting to control the opposition by ridiculing the notion of conspiracy generally.
For instance by raising interest rates and contracting the money supply. Bernays’ actions encouraging Americans to borrow money from banks he represented in order to purchase stocks also contributed.
Carnegie’s monopoly on steel mills was threatened by Rockefeller’s iron mines in the Mesabi range when Rockefeller began selling to Carnegie’s competitors at cheap prices. The two magnates later came to an agreement whereby Rockefeller agreed not to go into the steel business and to sell the entire output of his mines to Carnegie, and Carnegie for his part agreed not to go into the ore or transportation business.[13] Rockefeller’s famous quote is apt: “competition is a sin.”
See for instance the meeting at Jekyll Island where the Federal Reserve was conceived. Although the meeting occurred in 1910, and the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, it wasn’t until 1935 that the meeting was admitted to by those involved, when Frank Vanderlip, one of the bankers at the meeting, wrote about it in an article entitled From Farm Boy to Financier in the February 9th edition of the Saturday Evening Post. Frank writes about the meeting:
Despite my views about the value to society of greater publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion, near the close of 1910. when I was as secretive—indeed, as furtive—as any conspirator. [...] I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyl Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. [...] Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it were to he exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.[14]
Note that it is the demarcation of conspiracy theory in question here, not the definition of conspiracy itself. A plot amongst gang members to assassinate the leader of a rival gang and take over his territory is not the subject of conspiracy theory. A conspiracy of peasants against rulers is a revolt or rebellion, not the subject of conspiracy theory. A conspiracy of elites against other elites falls under the purview of elite theory rather than conspiracy theory, though the relatedness of the fields means that such information will also be relevant for conspiracy theoretic questions. (It may also entail conspiracy theory outright if the clash takes place in public in disguised form, for instance as psychological warfare against supporters of rival elites).
This may result in the accusations of schizotypal thinking that are often levied at conspiracy theory.
Terrific essay!
"This kind of mass manipulation was made possible by the advent of mass media, which enabled the industrialization of propaganda, spinning, and lying."
Yes, for some reason most rightists refuse to believe or accept the truth that advent of mass media, and its control by leftists, is by far the left's most potent weapon for taking over our society.
One of the few blogs that discusses NBIC. Thank you!