Conspiracy Theories: From the Mind to the Media

Conspiracy theories thrive in cultures that have lost the ability to understand the science and art of politics. Yes, it is a science and an art. Especially when you put things like economics and sociology into the mix.

Recently, one important aspect of politics, which in turn has left many to switch off their logic button, is its insistence on secrecy. That is why there are political analysts and scholars, whose job it is to decode certain political maneuvers.

However, there are very few of them out there. Especially in this day and age, when most people have lost the will, patience and focus to understand politics beyond drawing room gossip and grand conspiracy theories.

Reasons for such a happening is everything, from the sudden, post-9/11 changes in the way we conduct our lives to the evolution of a brand new, post-Cold-War emphasis on the whole concept of political secrecy on part of both the rulers and their enemies.

Even though the secrecy aspect of politics was as strong during the Cold War, I believe in that era, people were far more politically literate. The conspiracy theories hardly ever ventured beyond the usual UFO sightings, alien landings and Bermuda Triangles!

Moreover, the political discourse between the left and right sides of the political/ideological divide used to have more meaning. The foundations of this discourse were usually based on the correct understanding of the politics that was shaping the sociology and economics of the Cold War.

But, of course, for the past many years, a completely new ball game has kicked in. Its politics are murky because it is trying to totally redefine how we understood material life before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and especially after the harrowing fall of the Twin Towers six years ago.

The interesting thing is, the current two overwhelming strains of the “new-right” (the “neo-cons”/ “neo-liberals,” and the Islamists), seem to be gaining the most from this subsequent depoliticalization and confusion of more and more people.

Consequentially, this generation of 21st century Earthlings is leaning a tad too much on sensational conspiracy theories and gossip that is unfortunately getting away by calling itself “political insight” and “fact.”

As the neo-cons and the neo-liberals gradually raise the level of the projected importance attached to the coming of some fantastical global democratic Utopia based on free market enterprise and corporate citizenship, the Islamists have also raised their bar at what they have always been good at i.e. Effective rumormongering.

Thus, these two supposedly opposing strains of the “new right” have left people finding themselves stretching a lot more than ever to keep their economic and social selves intact. This is exhausting their understanding of politics. This phenomenon has created a lot of confusion and the subsequent eruption of people blindly believing in a number of conspiracy theories.

The secrets of this form of politics are not being scrutinized and decoded with the academically sound and insightful ways it used to. I mean, how many people would rather quote Fox News “experts” or Shahid Masood today rather than Chomsky, Frost or Cowasjee?

Therefore, what is even more alarming is the entry of the mainstream media into the fry. Even though the whole idea of journalism (electronic or print), being turned from a focused mission into an amoral business is not all that new, it seems in the last six years or so the transformation is now complete.

The so-called free media today quite unabashedly searches for markets like a toothpaste brand or a cola brand, through their marketing departments, “focus groups” and fancy sounding “market researches.”

And lo and behold! Many have come up trumps discovering a massive market hungry for the latest conspiracy theory. The result being, the tremendous commercial growth witnessed by FOX News Network, Al-jazeera and a number of Pakistani news channels and newspapers.

That’s why, on these channels “political talk shows” hardly ever go beyond discussing speculative political gossip and senseless mudslinging matches and worse, whole series of so-called in-depth “documentaries” on topics ranging from “Signs of the day of judgment” to who really fell the WTC.

Understandably, never does one see (or expect to see) a respected political thinker or analyst being part of such apocalyptic media circus, but the channels venture on as long as they have a captive audience nodding their heads in dim thought.

Though on the media’s part, this is a cynical and amoral act to bag audiences (and thus hefty advertising), and for the audience something akin to a mixture of a fictional thriller and a reality TV show episode.

But is it really all that harmless?

Modern notions of conventional Machiavellian politics would suggest that a ruler remains strong when his “realpolitik” shots never filter out and remain protected from a damaging process of popular accountability as long as the mutilating power of religious superstition and fantastical conspiracy theories keep griping and distracting the masses. In fact (and thus), the ruler should be encouraging the proliferation of these theories.

This has been the neo-con/neo-liberals’ way to deal with the expected commotion they are always likely to face from the people as they continue to shape society and economics according to their all-out post-Cold-War dictates. However, they are now being forced to think again.

This is why: On the other end of the present-day “new right” are the Islamists. Ever since the 1950s, Islamists (both conventional and radical), have actually, through propaganda and the media, used the proliferation of conspiracy theories and superstition as an effective way to create whole movements against what they consider to be “secular” and “infidel” governments.

One must dwell briefly in a few examples here.

The impressive 1857 rebellion by Indian soldiers against their British masters was largely started by a group of Muslim soldiers who claimed that that the grenades the Muslim and Hindu soldiers were using had leather made from pig and cow skin.
Even though the Shah of Iran was a well-known stooge of the American CIA and an unabashed tyrant mostly hated by his own people, groups of highly motivated Muslim evangelists and clerics had to sensationalize the Shah’s material extravagance and lifestyle to turn on the urban Iranian middle-classes. Even the great Iranian scholar, Ali Shariati, sometimes had to speak on this very non-political aspect of the Shah’s failings.

In a way, the same ploy was repeated by the religious parties (led by the Jamaat-e-Islami), against the Z. A. Bhutto regime in the 1970s. To appeal to the imagination of the masses, these parties played heavily on Bhutto’s liking for alcohol and prostitutes!

Islamists are masters of rumormongering regarding events and traits that really do not require any serious political analysis. And those events that do need political analysis are instead sensationalized and mutilated until they come out looking like thrilling conspiracy theories.

So in the face of such a daunting happening, I do wonder what service are so many news channels out there doing to “inform” the public by airing political gossip in the name of political analysis and sensational “documentaries” in the name of the “truth?” Because no matter how “liberal” they are pretending to be with their pop shows, fashion parades, soap operas and epic advertising marathons, in the end (mostly unintentionally?), they seem to have turned into modern mouthpieces of vapid conspiracy theorists and ardent political gossipers.

The question is not who is winning in this war between the two aggressive strains of the “new right.” The question is who is able to use the media the best possible way to influence the minds and beliefs of those caught in the crossfire?

Because I do wonder, how exactly is the neo-liberal dream of turning the whole world into a consumerist Utopia any less bothersome than the conspiracy theorists’ sensationally televised apocalypse scenarios?

This is a question I am just too scared to answer.