#michael barkun

[1000rh]

Jodi Dean […] argues that there is no longer a “consensus reality” according to which contested questions of fact can be resolved. She suggests that on subjects such as alien abduction and political conspiracies, there are multiple contending realities, which keep contested issues from being decided. Further, the ease with which individuals who hold such views can communicate with one another allows them to form at least “virtual” communities and provide the requisite social support to one another.

Dean’s position, while extreme in its suggestion of epistemological anarchy, is sufficiently reflective of the material considered here that it must be taken seriously. One implication of her view is that with the dissolution of the boundary between fringe and mainstream, there is no longer a domain of stigmatized knowledge. Factors to which Dean points, such as the Internet and a widespread suspicion of authority, support such a position. Nevertheless, so radical a view strikes me as excessive. Although important changes have occurred, not every belief stands on an equal level.

– Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy (2003)

[1000rh]

Conspiracism is, first and foremost, an explanation of politics. It purports to locate and identify the true loci of power and thereby illuminate previously hidden decision making. The conspirators, often referred to as a shadow or hidden government, operate a concealed political system behind the visible one, whose functionaries are either ciphers or puppets.

– Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy (2003)

[ghoulchantsister]

"A conspiracist worldview implies a universe governed by designed rather than by randomness. The emphasis on design manifests itself in three principles found in virtually every conspiracy theory:

Nothing happens by accident. Conspiracy implies a world based on intentionality, from which accident and coincidence have been removed. Anything that happens occurs because it has been willed. At its most extreme, the result is a 'fantasy [world]...far more coherent than the real world.'

Nothing is as it seems. Appearances are deceptive, because conspirators wish to deceive in order to disguise their identities or their activities. Thus the appearance of innocence is deemed to be no guarantee that an individual or group is benign.

Everything is connected. Because the conspiracists' world has no room for accident, pattern is believed to be everywhere, albeit hidden from plain view. Hence the conspiracy theorist must engage in a constant process of linkage and correlation in order to map the hidden connections.

In an odd way, the conspiracy theorist's view is both frightening and reassuring. It is frightening because it magnifies the power of evil, leading in some cases to an outright dualism in which light and darkness struggle for cosmic supremacy. At the same time, however, it is reassuring, for it promises a world that is meaningful rather than arbitrary. Not only are events nonrandom, but the clear identification of evil gives the conspiracist a definable enemy against which to struggle, endowing life with purpose."

-Michael Barkun, "The Nature of Conspiracy Belief," in A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, 2nd ed., p. 3-4.