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Cassam's "Conspiracy Theories" II - Right-wing Propaganda (Conspriacy Theatre)
541 Plays1 month ago
Josh and M get to grips with chapters 3 and 4 of Quassim Cassam's 2029 book "Conspriacy Theories."
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcastors' Guide
00:00:04
Speaker
the Podcastors' Guide to the Conspiracy featuring Josh Addison and Em Denteth.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcastors' Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and in Zhuhai, China, I'll have what she's having. It's Associate Professor Em R X Denteth. I've never seen that film. Really? No, I quite like it.
00:00:30
Speaker
it I mean, i I do enjoy a rom-com, but it's just not just not one of the rom-coms, so i know I know the line, I know the film. I've never seen the line in context of the film. Yeah, no, I quite like the film. To be honest, I think that scene got all the press, but it's probably one of the weaker scenes in the film, I think. But it is endlessly quotable.
00:00:53
Speaker
Which is to say, actually, win was a like when was the last time you actually used that line? Because I'm saying it's endlessly quotable. You're probably going, yeah, the last time I used that line was about 12 years ago. Probably, yes. So how I think now, actually, I was going to say, I'm going to say how are things in in your academic life, but I know maybe we need to be saving that for the bonus episode. Indeed.
Writing Update and Book Discussion
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i believe there has been progress on your book yes yes so you have now seen a copy of chapter one i have now completed a rough draft of chapter two i'm not currently at work on chapter three because i need to revise some papers and submit another paper so i'm taking a break from writing chapter three as i do other work But I do want to get back onto chapter three as soon as possible, because I'm quite enjoying writing this book. I don't know with anyone's enjoying reading it, but I'm enjoying writing it. And isn't that the most important part? I mean, in kind the academic world, not actually what's more important is with with the people like me. Getting cited and referred to. Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
yeah writing a book that no way she know actually know's all true writing a book that nobody likes but gets published is also a good thing because if you write something that everybody hates then they're going to cite it. Well maybe as a bit of a bit of methadone to the heroine of your writing addiction we can talk about someone else's chapter three.
00:02:28
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this episode. Do you think that'll tide you out? Oh, I like the way you've managed to segue from my proposed book on conspiracy theories to a book that's already been written on conspiracy theories and was published five years ago. Yes, so this is this is our second look.
00:02:49
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at Conspiracy Theories by Kasim Kasam from 2019. Last week we looked at chapters 1 and 2, this time chapters 3 and 4. And this time it's personal. I mean, you say you say that, but we'll we'll talk about that at the end of today's yeah podcast yeah because I actually know this is part two of three.
00:03:09
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Okay, you lied to me. It's fine. i I'm used to being made to read under false pretenses from you. At least just do I didn't lie to you through dance this time. Yeah, I guess that's fine. Well, play a chime and we'll just I'll just just just get on with it. I'll play the chime. You see the quiet fury. Welcome to conspiracy theory.
00:03:37
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So chapter three, let's dive straight into it.
Defining Conspiracy Theories
00:03:40
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Chapter three, which I'm looking at, and he'll be handling chapter four, ah chapter three is called the problem with conspiracy theories. So you'll recall from last time, chapter one, he was talking about why conspiracy theories are ah likely to be false and the fact and why the fact that they're likely to be false means they actually function as propaganda, and he's going to be referring to that a bit in chapter three. He's also going to keep doing the thing that we talked about last episode, if you recall. He says he's interested in the sort of extraordinary conspiracy theories, the one that have his particular properties that means that the ah they're're they're likely to be false. And he calls these ones conspiracy theories in the upper case with a capital C and a capital T, and refer and uses conspiracy theory all in lower case to refer to just the general term of any any theory about a conspiracy.
00:04:30
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And last time that got a little bit tricky because there were points where he swapped back and forth, but mostly he stuck to the um the uppercase part. I think this one that's going to get even trickier. So you you might just have to bear with us in a few places as we have to stop and explain exactly what kind of conspiracy theory he's talking about, such as in The very first paragraph of chapter 3 which goes, we live in a world in which governments including western governments are often up to no good they lie cheat and conspire there are well-docued examples of conspiracies by us government agencies such as the cia and it's vital that their claims about what they are and are not up to are ah thoroughly investigated
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Democracy needs people who are prepared to look into evidence of bad behaviour by our political masters, including evidence of conspiracy. These people are conspiracy theorists. Bravo, Kasam! Bravo! Those are words we we we could live by. I mean, this is an absolute turnaround from chapters one and two. Absolute turnaround. I love the twist. It's a really great way you you drag them in and then you drag them back out again.
00:05:30
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Well, not so fast, because in that chapter, every instance of the word conspiracy and conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist was in lower case. So he was talking in the general sense this time. And as you as you say, this sounds like the opposite view from what he's been saying in chapter three. And it turns out that's because it is. He continues saying this is the thinking that leads philosopher David Cody to conclude that conspiracy theorists are performing an important task on behalf of the community. So he was actually summing up David Cody's position there, which is one that we've looked at before. Although, in this case, he's referring to David's what to believe now applying epistemology to contemporary issues. Is that one we've looked at? Or is that a book? It's a book. So he has he has a book that was published by
00:06:15
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so it's a Rutledge imprint, so it's Blackwell. What to believe now, applying epistemology to contemporary issues. It has a chapter on conspiracy theories. Interestingly enough, it was a chapter that was going to be co-written with Charles Picton, but Charles didn't have the time to work on it, so David wrote the chapter on his own, but there's a credit to Charles at the end.
00:06:37
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And yes, it's a chapter of a book. So we haven't actually looked at that particular text, in part because it's a synthesis and summary of David's work prior to that point. So there's actually nothing novel or new in it. He's simply taking the work he's done on conspiracy theory theory and put it into an applied epistemology text.
00:06:59
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Right, so Kasam sort of sums up Cody's views here. Kasam says that Cody says that a conspiracy theorist, again, still in lowercase, is a person who is unusually willing to investigate conspiracy, that conspiracy theorists, again, lowercase, perform an important social function by investigating evidence of conspiracies and that even if theory if a theory is wrong, it's it's good that someone looked into it.
00:07:25
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Kasam says that Cody says that even when they're wrong, conspiracy theorists harm only themselves, and that conspiracy theorists are less harmful than conspiracy skeptics. Now, some of those claims are true, and the other claims, I think, are either overstatements or gross generalisations, because It is the case that Cody is saying, well, look, we should probably not use a pejorative term like conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorists because they are akin to the term witch hunt.
00:07:58
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If we're going to use those terms, we need to be aware that conspiracy theorists in the Charles Pigton sense is just about anyone. So a conspiracy theorist is someone who is willing to entertain the existence of a conspiracy. And David is committed to the claim that conspiracy theorists in that sense play an important social function because they are looking into claims of conspiracy to work out whether they are real claims of conspiracy or vapid or deservedly suspicious conspiracy theories. And it is true, he says, look, in many cases when conspiracy theorists are wrong, their wrongness really only harms themselves, but he's not saying they only harm themselves. That's where Kasam is kind of drawing a really broad brush here. Yes, but nevertheless, that's the that's the claim he takes issue with, because this chapter is largely going to be Islam spelling out exactly how conspiracy theories
00:08:54
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are harmful. Now, having just summarised David's views using his general lowercase conspiracy theory definition, he then continues, my focus in this book has been on conspiracy theorists it's now with a capital letter. So these are his his people who believe in his extraordinary ah implausible conspiracy theories.
00:09:15
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My focus in this book has been
Critique of Kasam's Definitions
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on conspiracy theorists, people who are excessively willing to believe conspiracy theories and capital letters. These aren't just theories about conspiracies, they are theories about conspiracies that are unlikely to be true for the reasons given in chapter one. Is it true that conspiracy theorists, again capitals now, harm only themselves? Imagine being the parent of a child who's just been shot dead at her elementary school and having to listen to people who claim that the shooting was a false flag operation in which no one died.
00:09:42
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How can anybody think that such theories only harm the people who put them forward? So he when talking about David's views, he uses one definition of conspiracy theory and theorist and then switches to his other definition when he's talking about his own views, which is ah makes makes it a bit difficult to read. And it gets even more difficult when he then starts swapping between the two we' within the same sentence, just talking about, sort of giving an introduction of what he's going to be talking about in this chapter. He says, this chapter is about the various ways in which conspiracy theories, capital, how all of us. Cody calls people who vilify conspiracy theories lowercase and conspiracy theorists lowercase conspiracy betas. He has a problem with conspiracy betas. My problem is with conspiracy apologists, people who make excuses for conspiracy theories in our uppercase.
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and downplay the serious harms they do. These are of different kinds, personal, social, intellectual and political. Conspiracy apologists risk becoming apologists for the political causes that conspiracy theories, capital letter, have promoted. People who talk about the good that conspiracy theories, capital letter, should think long and hard about this.
00:10:53
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Our political masters need to be held to account, but spreading wild conspiracy theories, capital C, is the wrong way to do that. So again, so even with one sentence, he's talking he uses his definition and he's talking about himself and then immediately switches back to the other one when he's talking about David's views. And he he never he never really addresses the fact that he's switching definitions, but possibly he just thinks it's clear, the fact that he is clear, he he is he is um He has this different capitalization scheme. I guess he thinks it makes it clear what which definition he's using at which point, but he doesn't. And the fact that he uses the the the lower case and upper case differently suggests that he is aware that he and David are talking about different things at times, but he then just sort of carries on talking as though it's the same thing all along. And he certainly never never at any point says,
00:11:41
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Now you'll notice that I swapped back and forth here, that's because, or justifies doing that, so it does get a little bit little little bit thorny in this case. Yet it's almost if he's going nudge nudge wink wink, you know what David Coady's really talking about. He defends conspiracy theories in the lower case in his writings, but really he's defending conspiracy theories in the upper case, as I, Kasam, have to defined them.
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there is something very odd about this chapter because you'll note he also is calling Cody and is about to call Charles Picton a conspiracy apologist and their conspiracy apologist because he's taking it that they are apologizing for capital C capital T conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theorizing But it's very clear they're not talking about Qassam's conspiracy theories in the upper case, because the definition they have of conspiracy theory is the lower case definition of conspiracy theory that Qassam himself put forward in the first chapter. So he's chiding
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David and Charles for subscribing to views that Kasam himself subscribes to, but he just isn't willing to say all these earlier philosophers have somehow got there first. Yes, I think when we when we get to um looking at at what Kasam has to say about Charles Pigton later on in this chapter, I think that'll become even more clear. But for now, for now, it's just a bit confusing. ah But at idiot right at this point, he's sort of he's done talking about about David Cody's views just for the moment. And he's back to talking about conspiracy theories with a capital C and a capital T. um And nothing but for this point. so So from now on, until I say otherwise, when you hear the word conspiracy theory,
00:13:32
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it'll be with a capital C and a capital T. So in other words, his his particular ah special view of these these extraordinary and plausible conspiracy theories. And the point he wants to say is that his capital C, capital T can set t conspiracy theories can cause all sorts of harm. So he's mentioned personal harm. And as an example of this, he goes on to give the example of harm to Clay Shaw's reputation and livelihood. Clay Shaw was a man who Jim Garrison accused of being involved in the Kennedy assassination and took him to court and and um and was eventually, you know, his his Garrison's views of the Kennedy assassination were rejected and the the case came to nothing but it nevertheless proved Clay Shaw's reputation and indeed ate up all his money in legal fees. So that's personal, but then he he talks about, it goes from there to about how conspiracy theories can cause social harm
00:14:30
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In an example of this, he gives anti-vex conspiracy theories leading to large numbers of preventable deaths, again, and the same thing for AIDS-related conspiracy theories of the sort believed by Tarbo and Becky in South Africa. and We talked Where did we talk about Nirvana and not Nirvana, the Foo Fighters? Oh, that was a year, maybe two years long ago. So I think people at the moment have been saying, OK, yes, Dave Grohl cheated on his wife and and got another one pregnant. That's a bit shit, but probably not as shit as as promoting ah AIDS, AIDS, AIDS conspiracy theories that lead to quite a number of deaths in avoidable deaths in South Africa.
00:15:12
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So there's the harms to people and and groups of people in society, but then moreover, there are there there are other kinds of harm that can be done. So, so Kasam says, causing unnecessar unnecessary deaths is an example of a serious social harm. The social harms caused by conspiracy theories are related to the ways in which they are intellectually harmful.
00:15:32
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One such way is the fact that they prevent us from knowing things that we would otherwise know. Conspiracy theories are obstacles to knowledge, and because of that, they are also harmful to us in other ways. And so then we get to a but bit of good old-fashioned epistemology when we talk about knowledge and what it means to know stuff. So talking about knowledge, he gives the example of um a parent who at first knows that MMR vaccines are safe because they've been told so by a doctor who's an expert in this field and is an authority that you've listened to. But then they go and read a bunch of anti-vax stuff on the internet and
00:16:07
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no longer consider that they know MMR vaccines to be safe, or in other words, they they no longer have the confidence to say that they know the MMR vaccine is safe. And so Kasam goes over a bit of sort of what it what it means to count as knowledge, and in particular, the the the properties that he's interested in is is the fact that to know something, that thing must be true.
00:16:27
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And you must be confident of it. and know in In epistemology, there'll be other other other conditions perhaps and in how you might want to define knowledge. But it's the truth and the confidence that he's particularly interested in. Well, the truth and the justification. just where Justification might be confident. I think the thing which is interesting about his example here is that he starts off by saying, look, the parent knows the and NMR ah vaccine is safe.
00:16:51
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But because their confidence can be very easily undermined, underminded undermined undermined because their confidence can be easily undermined by new information. You might say, well, actually they didn't know MMR vaccines were safe in the first place. They had a justified belief.
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And obviously that justification was malleable in some sense. So he might be studying from the wrong premise here. It's not that the conspiracy theory undermined knowledge here. It was that the parents didn't know why they were justified in believing the vaccines were safe in the first place. And that's demonstrated by the fact that it was very easy to undermine their belief with new evidence.
00:17:37
Speaker
But that's one of those debates we have in epistemology about how much justification is adequate justification to make the claim that someone knows something as opposed to just believes it. In any case, I think we could we could all agree that there's been an undermining of confidence, if not if not knowledge. and it's it's my what he might be My confidence is undermined right now. oh i regular That's because I'm sitting very awkwardly.
00:18:05
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but's So so he he's interested in a case like this. Why why would you be confident in anti-vaxxers over doctors? And yet people are. And this leads him into a talk of of sources, your source of information and this is, I think, I think he says is, or the he wants to say is that your confidence can, at at least in some cases, come from the source that you're the source of your information, if it's a good source, which he and he defines a good source as something that is qualified and trustworthy.
00:18:36
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then you can be confident of what you're hearing. um And so he then brings us into the idea of expertise. Experts are people who are are qualified, trustworthy sources. He says, being qualified is often a matter of having actual qualifications obtained by study. The cardiologist who tells me about my heart has to degree degrees to prove that she is an expert. Another aspect of being qualified is having the right kind of experience. An experienced cardiologist is more qualified to tell me about my heart than someone fresh out of medical school.
00:19:05
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Lastly, a genuine expert is one who is recognised as an expert by her peers. If nobody else in her profession thinks she's any good, then she isn't an expert. and so i think's really come back to expertise the next chapter so yes you're listening along to this which presumably you are because you are listening to a podcast but if you're paying attention to the podcast but a pin in this pi fatigue becomes a bit of a problem for Kassar. Yes. At this point, though, he he repeats the claim he made back in chapter one, that that many, if not most, conspiracy theorists, again, we're still in capital letters, they're not experts in the field that relate to the conspiracy. they that They are amateurs in this sense. And he says conspiracy theorists will appeal to their own experts, though, but sometimes often they'll be someone like Andrew Wakefield, if if we're still talking about MMR vaccines and the like.
00:19:52
Speaker
And the thing was, he was kind of an expert. He just was an expert who had expertise that wasn't in consensus with the rest of the experts in his field. He wasn't an amateur.
00:20:06
Speaker
He just wasn't one of those experts. And indeed one who was then later discredited. I mean, I've heard i've heard people just sort of anecdotally referring to just scientists, know quote quote, unquote, scientists or lots of scientists believe
Expert Reliability in Conspiracy Theories
00:20:22
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that. I saw ah a debate between scientists and a flat earther or something. The flat earther just kept saying, yeah, lots of physicists think this without even even naming a source, but obviously believing that he had had sources for his information. But looking at the likes of Andrew Wakefield, he, as you say, was an expert, which is why people listened to him when he first put out his paper. Then it turned out you people people looked into it and discovered that his study was not to proper academic standards and it was withdrawn and he was discredited.
00:20:50
Speaker
And also his paper was published in one of the most premier medical journals in the world. So it wasn't just he was he was an expert who turns out to not have been a particularly good expert. He published in the right publication. And that publication kind of showed he was considered to be an expert at the time.
00:21:13
Speaker
At the time, he was an expert. Nowadays, he is considered to have been debunked. So if a cra were continuing to if a person were appealing to Andrew Wakefield in the year of our Lord 2024, then yes, that's probably not a suitable source. now talking Talking about the situation like Andrew Wakefield, where a person, an ex-person who was held up as an expert, has been discredited, Gassam says that faced with the discrediting of the experts, conspiracy theorists... No, Josh, the experts say it was in scare quotes. Sorry, thought it was, yes, I should say. It was in quote marks.
00:21:47
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Faced with the discrediting of their quote-unquote experts, conspiracy theorists do one of two things. One is to suggest that just because their experts aren't recognised as such by their establishment peers, it doesn't mean that they aren't experts. Who is and isn't a real expert is all relative to one's point of view, so anti-vaxxers are perfectly entitled to regard Wakefield as an expert by their own lights. The other response is to say that there's something wrong with the whole idea of expertise and deferring to experts.
00:22:11
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and a little bit later, says either response is a form of intellectual suicide. and um that that That phrase sparked a recollection in me. I had to look back through it. i It was Charles Pigdon who, in one of his papers we've looked and passed, talked about ah the idea of committing epistemic suicide or historical suicide by by taking certain attitudes towards conspiracy theories.
00:22:33
Speaker
Which was interesting because, might be like we've already mentioned, Charles Picton is going to show up in this chapter. But not quite yet. is Yes, and not not in the best light. No, because Kasam hasn't finished talking about the harms, the intellectual harms, that can result from conspiracy theories. He says they contribute to the death of expertise. I didn't actually write it down, but he does he does cite the person who came up with this phrase, death of expertise, that has been mentioned in Maurice at times.
00:23:00
Speaker
And he says um that that that contribut contributing to the death of expertise is not just intellectually harmful in its own right, it also explains how conspiracy theories are obstacles to knowledge. Given how much we all rely on the experts to know about the world we live in, anything that prevents us from acquiring knowledge from experts is an obstacle to knowledge more generally. It's difficult to imagine anything that more effectively prevents us from acquiring knowledge from experts than the suggestion that there is no good reason to rely on them,
00:23:25
Speaker
or the notion that who is and isn't an expert is a purely subjective matter. It isn't. And then goes from this into the idea that these intellectual consequences can then have political consequences, talking about, say, Brexit in the Great Britain and the um the the ah the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Luckily that's never going to happen again. There's no state of Trump, I mean, now. Yeah, good times to live in. And then this, obviously talking about it all leads to political consequences, goes back to his claim that the purpose of conspiracy theories is as propaganda. He says
00:23:59
Speaker
It's no surprise that conspiracy theories have political consequences. If their role is to promote a political cause, then conspiracy theories are as politically harmful as the causes they promote. A number of these causes have been extremist, racist causes. Although conspiracy theorists might dissociate themselves from such causes, it is nevertheless true that they operate in an ideological space with a long anti-Semitic tradition.
00:24:21
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That ideological space is one that has been occupied by fascists and other extremists, and this is an inescapable fact that any analysis of what conspiracy theories mean in practice has to acknowledge.
Conspiracy Theories and Extremism Frameworks
00:24:31
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and um goes on to point out that that even even if you sort of have moderate conspiracy theorists, still with the capital letters, so so people people who might appeal to sort of your your new world daughters or illuminates, but who who would not consider themselves to be antisemitic and don't don't express antisemitic views, they still get caught up in these theories because they can't change the fact that that's the space these conspiracy theories existed ah exist in.
00:24:58
Speaker
because um He gives the analogy of people who fly the Confederate flag, although I think the swastika would probably also work as an example here of something that has, you know, is as as people might point out the swastika has been a symbol used by cultures all over the world for a very, very long time.
00:25:13
Speaker
doesn't change the fact that these days it has very, very marked associations. But um in his words, Cassan says, in the same way, conspiracy theories have a life of their own with their own history and meaning. They symbolize a particular worldview, and that worldview is one that has always scapegoated and demonized particular groups of people, Jewish people more often than not. The non-racist who insists that conspiracy theories per se have got nothing to do with anti-Semitism is in the same position as the Southerner who argues that the Confederate flag per se has nothing to do with slavery. In both cases the answer is the same. You don't get to decide what things mean. The history of conspiracy theories is not something from which even politically progressive conspiracy theorists can separate themselves. So now now now he starts getting into um Charles Picton's work. He he starts to
00:26:01
Speaker
Section by saying conspiracy apologists again, this this is his term for people who attack who are opposed to his his conspiracy theories with a capital C and a capital T. Conspiracy apologists think that people who attack conspiracy theories must be friends or agents of the Western political establishment. For example, if a conspiracy theory blames the Bush administration for 9-11,
00:26:22
Speaker
then doesn't it follow that people who say that this theory is hogwash must be friends of the Bush administration? But the fact that a person criticises conspiracy theories doesn't mean that this person can't be as critical of governments and government agencies, written which seems like a fair point. You can say 9-11 conspiracy theories are nonsense, but that doesn't mean you're ah you're a massive fan of what their what what any particular US administration is doing in any number
Charles Pigdon's Contributions
00:26:45
Speaker
of arenas. Well, I mean, as we're discovering with the election campaign in the US, look, I think Trump is a terrible human being, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't make a good president. People have lots and lots of views which sometimes intersect or don't intersect with other views they have. Yes. So this this leads into and and a look at the works of Charles Pigdon, who Kasam refers to as
00:27:09
Speaker
a philosopher who has made a name for himself as a conspiracy apologist. And again, remember... Now, I'm going to take umbrage on Charles's behalf here, yeah because Charles has written quite a number of important papers on conspiracy theory, theory, and philosophy. But Charles has actually made a name for himself as someone who writes on aught versus is. So, you know, ethical theories of can we derive aught from his statements.
00:27:39
Speaker
And that's his chief contribution. That's what he will be known for in philosophy, is his work on alternatives. He will be known for his work on conspiracy theories as well, but primarily his contribution to the discipline is on ought and is. So I think this is actually throwing shade at Charles here by dismissing the the other important work he has done. Oh, look, this is just one of these people who does work on conspiracy theories. We we can ignore him. And again, remember, earlier on in this paper, Cassin defined a conspiracy apologist as someone who defends conspiracy theories with a capital C and a capital T. He says, so so a conspiracy apologist is someone who thinks that, who doesn't just think conspiracy theories in general, not the lowercase version, are worth defending. They're someone who actually defends his his extraordinary, implausible,
00:28:34
Speaker
conspiracy theories with a capital C, which I think even if you ignore the the the sidelining of Charles's other work, I don't think that's ah that's a fear thing to be saying about him at all.
00:28:49
Speaker
But um he he goes on to talk about his views. And as we just saw with David Cody above, he starts chopping and changing between his definitions of conspiracy theory. He says, according to Pigdon, when people say we shouldn't believe believe conspiracy theories now in the lower case, what they really mean is that we shouldn't believe conspiracy theories to lower case that accuse Western governments of involvement in evil schemes. Now, I should say he's looking in particular at Charles's 2007 paper, Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom, which is one we have. we have looked at back in 2021. At the end of the paper, he talks about the conspiracy theories about Western governments, and he's sort of it's certainly a lot more complicated than Kassam puts it here. I sort of had a quick flick through our notes again, and and from what I gather, it was he he was talking about a particular scenario of of of your
00:29:43
Speaker
your Tony Blair's and David Cameron sort of replying to um conspiracy theories around the war in Iraq and dodgy dossier and that sort of stuff. And he says, there's a lot of sort of reacting to another view. And it doesn't really seem to be a general statement that that that conspiracy theories are all about Western governments and and a few don't believe conspiracy theories, that means you you shouldn't believe theories. The whole Western governments thing, I think is a bit of a side issue, but... Yeah, Giles is just pointing out that we often tend to think of conspiracy theories as being something that are believed or occur elsewhere. And we certainly don't think of our own government as promoting conspiracy theories. And you say, well, that's a weird double standard we have here.
00:30:34
Speaker
So no, he's not making the claim that Kasam makes on on his behalf. As you point out, he's making a much more sophisticated, almost linguistic point about how the label conspiracy theory gets applied in political discourse. yeah but um So this idea that um we shouldn't believe conspiracy theories that accuse Western governments of involvement in evil schemes, he says, nobody in their right mind would recommend such a policy, and certainly not people whose objection to conspiracy theories now in capital letters.
00:31:02
Speaker
is that they promote right-wing causes. Anyway, as we saw in chapter 1, a conspiracy theory, again we're in capital letters now, isn't simply a theory that posits a conspiracy, it's a theory about a conspiracy that is unlikely to be true. Not believing such theories is quite consistent with believing evidence-based historical accounts of actual conspiracies, including accounts of conspiracies mounted by Western governments.
00:31:23
Speaker
The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they accuse Western governments of conspiracy, but that they aren't based on solid evidence and have a political agenda that conspiracy apologists should look at long and hard before leaping to their defence. So yeah, I mean, again, this this seems even more sort of problematic than he was talking about, David. He gives Pinkton's view with his lowercase version of conspiracy theories and then immediately starts talking about his uppercase conspiracy theories as though that's what Charles had been talking about when by his own his own schema it wasn't i sort of was ah reading through this thinking what what is he doing here i thought maybe the the charitable reading of of the way he puts this out could be that he's just saying that charles views don't really affect his own views because the talking about different things but,
00:32:09
Speaker
A less charitable reading would be that he's trying to trying to refute Charles's views, but doing it in kind of an unhanded underhanded way by swapping definitions on the fly. This becomes more of a worry further on as he says, in general, conspiracy apologists have surprisingly little to say about the actual history of conspiracy theories, and again, we're back to capital letters the whole time, or about the political causes they have been used to promote. The anti-Semitism of many conspiracy theories is either not mentioned at all or only mentioned in passing.
00:32:38
Speaker
But if conspiracy theories are used to provoke right-wing anti-Semitic causes, then conspiracy apologists and conspiracy theorists make strange bidfellows. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. the fact that conspiracy theorists and conspiracy apologists share a strongest like for Western foreign policy isn't an excuse for conspiracy apologists to overlook the history and political associations of conspiracy theories. So that was up a case the whole time, but but when Charles, was who he's accusing of being one of these conspiracy apologists, was talking about conspiracy theories, he wasn't using that definition. He was using the lowercase definition, and the fact that he's
00:33:12
Speaker
The fact that Kassam switches to exclusively using this other definition while still seemingly talking about the kind of position that Charles has certainly makes me feel a lot less charitable towards his arguments. I really i really don't know what he's what he's angling for here if he's not just being a little bit dishonest.
00:33:31
Speaker
And that's the thing, because he is actually quite careful in his writing to distinguish between when Charles talks about conspiracy theories, mention that Charles is talking about lowercase conspiracy theories, and then switching back to when he's talking about conspiracy theories, talking about uppercase conspiracy theories, it's quite clear that on some level he knows that Charles and David are not using the terminology the way he is using it, which is confounded by the fact that one of the examples in chapter one of a conspiracy theory that Kasam says is plausible is the weapons of mass destruction story, which both Charles and David have talked about.
00:34:16
Speaker
so It is tempting to think he's being underhanded here because he's being very careful in the way he ascribes views to people when discussing them directly. It's only when he goes on to talk about his own view and implies that conspiracy apologists like Charles and David are also talking about conspiracy theories in the uppercase.
00:34:45
Speaker
does he start to make these implications? At this point, he gives an example of um Noam Chomsky as being a person who is critical of Western governments without being a capital C conspiracy theorist, so which does make it so makes it sound like yeah if if this is if this is something he brings up as a contrast, he does appear to be saying that conspiracy apologists are capital C conspiracy theorists, which I don't believe either of the people he's called conspiracy apologists would agree with.
00:35:15
Speaker
um he he said He says if you're critical of Western governments, there's no need to get capital C conspiracy theories involved and indeed they can distract from the real problems since they they they can give what he calls personal explanations to things that are actually institutional or structural problems, which is a fair point and I don't think it's a point that Charles or David would disagree with. No. But tom but it anyway, even if all all of this aside, could it still not be the case that conspiracy theorists perform an important function, which is which is what was suggested when he was going over David's views at the start of the chapter? can't come you know Maybe conspiracy theorists are good things, although again, I should note that when he was talking about David's views to begin with, he said that it was lowercase conspiracy theorists who David said perform an important
00:36:03
Speaker
function by investigating these things. But we're back to the capital Cs now. Couldn't they, couldn't even your capital C conspiracy theorists, perform an important function and then looking into these things? Well, to that, Kasam says, the problem with this is that in the real world, conspiracy theorists tend not to be serious and impartial seekers of truth who base their claims of conspiracy on actual evidence of conspiracy. That's what makes them conspiracy theories with a capital C and a capital T. That's his words, not mine in this case.
00:36:32
Speaker
They are often more like Jim Garrison in that they are too willing to believe in conspiracy. They exaggerate evidence of conspiracy and ignore evidence against their theories. What the community needs, if it is to look into evidence of political conspiracy, is people with sound judgment, relevant expertise, and good investigative skills. People with these attributes are unlikely to be conspiracy theorists, have a less, with their strange obsessions and habit of jumping to sensational conclusions on the basis of flimsy or non-existent evidence. Conspiracy theorists are above all propagandists.
00:37:02
Speaker
they pretend to be serious researchers, but the reality is that their theories tend to be politics-based rather than evidence-based. They might occasionally get something right, but that is more a matter of luck than judgment. A nation that actually wants to know the truth about 9-11 and shouldn't be relying on the insights of a bunch of right-wing talk show hosts and retired academics. And again, this sounds completely compatible with what David and Charles were saying.
00:37:25
Speaker
neither of them were talking about Kassam's capital C conspiracy theories. so that yeah that it's Again, the switching of definitions, it starts to feel more and more dodgy. And indeed, how do we know if a lower case conspiracy theory is actually an upper case conspiracy theory and in order to to to be confident in saying that this is no this is one of these implausible ones under Kassam's definition surely you'd need to look into them a little bit. So you do need people investigating this. Committed to the claim that conspiracy theories, if they're not explicitly anti-Semitic, are crypto anti-Semitic. So you can't just look at a conspiracy theory and go, oh, that's an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, therefore it's right wing propaganda. You might go, oh,
00:38:11
Speaker
That conspiracy theory doesn't look anti-Semitic, therefore I can't just conclude its right-wing propaganda. I better look at the particulars of that theory and work out whether it is in fact right-wing propaganda. So you get to this kind of what I call the peculiar problem of generalism.
00:38:32
Speaker
How do you get to this notion that you have a general dismissal of these things called conspiracy theories unless someone is doing some degree of investigation behind the scenes?
00:38:43
Speaker
So he says, again talking about what the his his conspiracy apologists get wrong, he says it's not that conspiracy apologists are unaware of the gap between the theory and the reality of conspiracy theories. The problem is that they underestimate the extent of the gap and idealize conspiracy theorists. ah But I would say that the other problem is that they're using a different definition of conspiracy theory and conspiracy theories.
00:39:07
Speaker
So yeah, at this point at this point I found I was using bold and italics when spelling out what I was thinking here, which I think was a sign that I was getting a little bit little bit overly frustrated reading this, so it's probably a good thing that this is basically the end of the chapter.
Handling Conspiracy Theories Effectively
00:39:24
Speaker
He said what he thinks are the harms of his capital C conspiracy theories and concludes by leading into the next part. Chapter 3 finishes, all of this leaves us facing a pet practical problem. If conspiracy theories are really as problematic as I've been arguing, then what should we do about them? Should we try to rebut them? Or is it better to ignore them since nothing is going to change the conspiracy theorists mind anyway? That sounds tempting, especially given how bruising arguments with conspiracy theorists can be. At the same time,
00:39:52
Speaker
How can it be right to leave conspiracy theories unchallenged if they are harmful in the ways that I have been describing? These are the questions I'll be tackling in the final chapter of this book, which is chapter four, which is the one you looked at.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yes, chapter four, how to respond to conspiracy theories. And I was very tempted to say, well, look, all Kassam basically does mock and shun them. Case closed, let's walk walk away. But I feel to be fair to the audience, we should say slightly more about Kassam's policy recommendations as to how to respond to capital C, capital T, conspiracy theories. And he starts with 9-11. And he starts with a 9-11 commission report.
00:40:34
Speaker
and talks about the problems of, we know, complex events like 9-11 require complex explanations. And so there are conspiracy theories about 9-11, and they're very hard to rebut. And he goes, the problem is that rebutting a theory won't necessarily persuade its supporters to give it up. Rebutting is one thing, persuading is another. It is theories that are rebutted or not, but people who are persuaded or not.
00:41:02
Speaker
Whether a theory has been rebutted depends on whether it has in fact been proved to be false using good arguments and trustworthy information. Persuasion also requires that the person you are trying to persuade accepts that his theory has been disproved.
00:41:20
Speaker
Experience suggests that conspiracy theorists capital C, capital T, tend not to be persuaded by arguments against their theories. There aren't too many examples of committed conspiracy theorists changing their minds.
00:41:35
Speaker
Now, of course, this once again hinges on whether we mean conspiracy theorists or conspiracy theorists. It seems to be kind of built into his definition of conspiracy theorists, that these people are the kind of people who don't change their minds according to evidence. But this is complicated by the fact that two people that I'm fairly sure Kasam thinks are exemplar examples of conspiracy theorists in the Capital C Capital T variety, one Alex Jones and the other David Icke, are people that we know have changed their minds about at least some of the Capital C Capital T conspiracy theories they have believed. So Alex Jones thought that c Sandy Hook was a false flag, he now claims he doesn't believe that,
00:42:28
Speaker
David Icke has had various views, such as believing himself to be the Christian Messiah. He no longer believes that to be the case. They are people who are conspiracy theorists with a big C and a big T, who have believed really big C, really big T, conspiracy theories.
00:42:45
Speaker
And they have changed their minds despite being committed conspiracy theorists in this general sense. Although I should note, he does have the get out clause, aren't too many examples. So all the examples we can put forward of, well, here's a conspiracy theorist, capital C, capital T, who's changed their mind. because imka Well, you know, I did say there aren't. That's one of the exceptions to prove the rule. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:12
Speaker
I just think there's going to be a lot more exceptions than he's actually willing to bite the bullet on. So Kasam goes on to say we have a bit of a dilemma on our hands. On one hand, engaging with conspiracy theories, capital C, capital T,
00:43:29
Speaker
gives both the conspiracy theories and the conspiracy theorists undeserved attention. And that's a problem. We don't want to draw people's attention to this right-wing propaganda, anti-Semitic set of beliefs. But at the same time, not engaging with them would allow these capital C, capital T conspiracy theories to proliferate. So what are we to do?
00:43:55
Speaker
And so he moves on quite naturally to talk about the solution that Sunstein and the mule came up with, which he was going to be showing up here, didn't you? Yeah. And initially he defends it by saying this is definitely not the case of these two people, one of which is attached to the Obama administration at the time of publication of the original article.
00:44:21
Speaker
spying on conspiracy theorists. I mean there's there's nothing that untoward happening here. and Instead he criticises Sunstein and Vermeule's plan because it will suffer from the backfire effect. So for people who don't remember Sunstein and Vermeule's solution for conspiracy theories, and once again these are conspiracy theories in the lower case variety,
00:44:45
Speaker
they claim the best way to do it would be to dissuade conspiracy theorists from believing their conspiracy theories by getting government operatives to infiltrate the fora that conspiracy theorists hang out in, and thus put in information to try to dissuade people from believing those conspiracy theories, which most right-minded people have pointed out sounds like it is in fact a conspiracy against conspiracy theorists, the kind of thing that if conspiracy theorists found out there was a conspiracy going on against them, would confirm some of their views about the existence of the very conspiracies that their conspiracy theories are centered around. So Kasam doesn't deal with that particular part, because he doesn't take it that it has that particular flaw, rather
00:45:35
Speaker
It's going to suffer from the backfire effect, because conspiracy theories in the upper case variety are self-sealing in nature, so any evidence that these infiltrators put forward against a conspiracy theory is going to be
Self-Sealing Nature of Conspiracy Theories
00:45:52
Speaker
accounted for by the capital C capital T conspiracy theorists because they'll simply take the evidence against the capital C capital T conspiracy theory as being evidence for the capital C capital T conspiracy theory.
00:46:08
Speaker
So he's now added on to his list of characteristics of things that mark these conspiracy theories in the uppercase out as being special, that they also have a self-sealing aspect. Which means that in chapter four of the book he's still supplementing and adding to the definition he provided back in chapter one. Yeah, I mean maybe you could argue that the features he already um mentioned imply this already, but it does seem a little bit late in the day to be to be adding on to it.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, so he goes on to say, they would say that, wouldn't they, is the conspiracy theorist, capital C, capital T, stock response to government officials who dispute their theories. Contrary evidence is dismissed either as fake news or as part of the conspiracy. It's hard to win an argument with a person whose fundamental assumptions and ways of thinking are completely different from yours. And he also adds, conspiracy theories aren't just theories.
00:47:12
Speaker
They are expressions of a particular view about how the world works and can't be shaken without changing the conspiracy theorist capital C capital T overall world view. This is just not something that can be done by quoting official studies and experts. A person with the conspiracy theorist world view is obviously going to see the studies and expert as tainted.
00:47:37
Speaker
And now this, once again, raises the question of who these conspiracy theorists are. And he's talked about JFK conspiracy theorists. We'll go into that in more detail in a minute. He's talked about 9-11 conspiracy theorists. And it's not quite clear that he actually knows what JFK conspiracy theorists or 9-11 conspiracy theorists believe, because If you were to actually sit him down and talk through the varieties of, say, 9-11 conspiracy theories, I wonder what he would make of Lehot theories, which I take it are at least a plausible cluster of 9-11 conspiracy theories, the idea that maybe
00:48:24
Speaker
It is the case that Al-Qaeda committed the event, but maybe there was information that was known in advance that either wasn't acted upon because there were officials or members of the government who wanted a war in the Middle East.
00:48:39
Speaker
or it wasn't acted upon because the information was downplayed and the downplaying of the information is now being covered up subsequently. It seems that there are at least clusters of these capital C, capital T conspiracy theories in which people are debating the evidence, they are having discussions about how to cope with the evidence, and they aren't necessarily self-sealing in the way that Kasam wants to make them out to be.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have an enough experience perhaps with some of this to say that um to to say exactly yeah the the nature of these kinds of debates within conspiracy theory communities, but up until now he has been talking in very general terms about what sounds like a stereotype more than anything. Yeah.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah. So, yeah, given that especially back in chapter three, he was talking about the these conspiracy theorists apology, ah sorry, conspiracy apologists views don't survive contact with reality. I wonder if his stereotype is the same.
00:49:46
Speaker
Yes, and if you just spent some time looking at what various conspiracy theorists believe and you look at things like the JFK community of conspiracy theorists or the general set of 9-11 conspiracy theorists. So this is an audio podcast and I just did scare quotes around the set there because I'm aware that 9-11 conspiracy theory communities are vexatious in and amongst themselves. There are huge debates amongst members of that community as to what are acceptable and unacceptable theories to put forward. You'd be aware of just how much evidence is debated within those communities. And it isn't necessarily the case just because the government says it.
00:50:32
Speaker
They'll go, oh, well, that must be part of the conspiracy. Some part of the evidence used by those conspiracy theorists, whether they are Qasam's capital C, capital T, or just standard lowercase conspiracy theorists, is using evidence by the government to pursue or dismiss particular theoretical claims within their community.
00:50:56
Speaker
So it's just not clear who he's talking about here when he talks about these these people suffering from self-sealing beliefs. That being said, he does think that one of the best ways to approach this topic would be to look at moderate conspiracy theory beliefs, and that's moderate capital C, capital T, conspiracy theory beliefs. He writes, a more promising and worthwhile target of rebuttal effort is people with a weaker commitment to conspiracy theories
00:51:29
Speaker
All the presumably large numbers of those who are curious about such theories may be even receptive to them, without yet being true believers. This is where there is some hope of getting somewhere. What is needed is a strategy that has a realistic chart of dissuading the undecided or moderate conspiracy theorists from fully going over to the dark side.
00:51:54
Speaker
The most seductive and serious conspiracy theories are politically motivated, but also have some semblance of intellectual respectability. An effective strategy for countering the spread of such theories will need to have both an intellectual and political dimension.
00:52:13
Speaker
Now, I'm not quite sure who are these moderate conspiracy theorists of the capital C, capital T variety. I'm not entirely sure how they fit into his schema of what counts as a as belief in a conspiracy theory, and thus who counts as being a conspiracy theorist.
00:52:36
Speaker
If it turns out there's moderate belief in these conspiracy theories of the capital C, capital T, variety, aren't we actually just talking about conspiracy theories sans capitalization? Yeah, I mean he's, earlier on he described as conspiracy theorists, as people who are Actually, no. Was that his definition or was that his definition his his statement of David's definition, a person who is unusually willing to investigate conspiracy? Actually, that's what he said David said. But I guess you could you could give him an out here if if he's seeing a conspiracy theorist with a capital C and a capital T as someone who is more predisposed than others to want to believe in these things. So then you wouldn't have to say,
00:53:23
Speaker
There's someone who definitely believes in any given one. But yeah, we're we're introducing nuance in in the fourth chapter of four, where previously everything's been quite general, so it is a bit of ah a bit of a swerve at this point.
Role of Experts Against Conspiracy Theories
00:53:38
Speaker
Yes, and now we're going to swerve into expertise. So he points out that there are some conspiracy theories which are so fantastical that we don't ever need to engage with them seriously. So David likes alien shapeshifting reptiles, for example. And as he points out, some conspiracy theories are complex and seem to have at least intellectual foundations.
00:54:02
Speaker
So he says, look, because of that, because some conspiracy theories yeah at least have the visage of being intellectually respectable, then what we need to do is just talk to the experts, rely on expert testimony and use those experts against the believers of those capital C, capital T conspiracy theories.
00:54:27
Speaker
and So he moves on to JFK conspiracy theories and moves on to a rather problematic example, Gerald Posner's book Case Closed. So Gerald Posner's book Case Closed is one of the cortex In JFK studies, if you want to say JFK conspiracy theories, i.e. that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the sole assassin of President Kennedy, it's Lee Texie refer to to say, look, all those conspiracy theories are bunk.
00:54:58
Speaker
ah on an amusing side in a recent reading group session for the conspiracy theory theory social club I i run. Curtis Hagan pointed out that it is kind of curious that skeptics of JFK conspiracy theories are happy to admit they've read one book and only one book which they think covers all the bases of JFK conspiracy theories without actually asking is Gerald Polson's book actually any good? They take it as being a definitive read and a case closed on what happened in Dallas on November 21st, 1963, which also reminds me this is a little bit like how people say, oh,
00:55:42
Speaker
All the president's men shows that Woodward and Bernstein weren't conspiracy theorists, showing they've never read the book because Woodward and Bernstein are very happy to admit that for the first six months of the Watergate investigation they ran for the Washington Post, they were really going out on a limb there and had no real evidence of a conspiracy by the Nixon White House. They were just going with their gut feelings on that particular issue.
00:56:10
Speaker
But for Kasam, the issue was this. Kasam was saying, look, we should refer to experts when rebutting conspiracy theories. The problem is, case closed was not written by an expert.
00:56:24
Speaker
Gerald Posner is a journalist. I think she might be, was a journalist. I actually don't know if he's still alive or not. If we had some kind of researcher who could just check the internet, we could we could check that with ease, but we'll just never know. Gerald Posner is now a Schrödinger's cat of researchers.
00:56:43
Speaker
So he was a journalist, he is not a forensic specialist, he's not a historian, and indeed one of the problems with the bookcase closed is that actual experts in history and sociology have criticized Posner for historical inaccuracies and factual inaccuracies in his presentation of the case that says that Lee Harvey Oswald was the person who was the sole assassin of President Kennedy. So even though I largely agree with Posner's conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald is the most likely person to have killed JFK and probably wasn't helped by anyone else, Posner is not the kind of expert that Kasam says we should be referring to
00:57:36
Speaker
when rebutting conspiracy theories. Posner is an amateur, he's a dedicated and interested amateur, but he is not an expert, and yet Kasam is quite happy to appeal to him when it comes to rebusing. Rebusing? Is that a word? Refusing?
00:57:56
Speaker
Refusing. Refusing them a much more prominent use of that word when it comes to refusing conspiracy theories in the capital C, capital T sense about the death of JFK. Yeah, all of his talk about about amateur versus the expert, or for all of his talk about amateur versus expert in the previous chapters,
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah, it seems odd to use that as an example. Now, here's a better example talking about David Irving and how Irving was rebutted by the British historian Richard Evans. And so this is an actual case of Richard Evans, an expert, rebutting someone who wasn't an expert. Although the interesting thing about the Irving case was that Irving, like Andrew Wakefield, was taken to be an expert at at least one point in time. It was when Irving started making claims of, well, there's not much evidence actually for the Holocaust in the Nazi files, that historians started going, I mean, that that doesn't seem right. And then they started looking back over Irving's earlier writings and when
00:59:08
Speaker
Ah, we kind of glossed over some of the historical inaccuracies in his accounting here. Irving is not quite the expert he presented himself to be. But it is the case that Richard Evans, who was instrumental, although should also point out not the sole reason that Irving was shown to be a Holocaust denier, was an expert.
00:59:32
Speaker
who was able to show that Irving's claims were incorrect. But then Kasam for some reason makes the following claim. The historian David Irving has for many years promoted the idea that Hitler didn't order the extermination of the Jews in Europe. In support of this claim he quotes a phonologue of a conversation between two senior Nazis in 1941 concerning an order supposedly given by Hitler to the effect there was to be no liquidation of the Jews.
01:00:00
Speaker
For non-specialists it can be hard to rebut such claims, and this might account for the growth of conspiracy theories ah about the Holocaust. now David Irving is a Holocaust denier. David Irving is a terrible human being. David Irving has at least contributed to the evidential base in scare quotes that Holocaust deniers use. But he is not responsible for the growth in Holocaust denial. It was, to put it in the scare quotes, doing fine well before David Irving came on the scene.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yes, overstating things a little bit there. mean he's yeah As you say, he's a good example of the sort of thing Asama's talking about. maybe he Maybe he just got a little bit carried away with wanting to say how... And well and that's the problem with both of these examples. He overstates the expertise of Posner to make a point which is actually somewhat contrary to his own thesis.
01:01:01
Speaker
And then he has to kind of overstate the power of David Irving to show how bad he was as a conspiracy theorist, capital C, capital T. You don't need to overstate how bad David Irving was. David Irving is a terrible human being.
01:01:20
Speaker
is a Holocaust denier. He is a case of someone who, if not a capital C, capital T conspiracy theorist, certainly the kind of person that Charles Pigdon and David Coady would say is putting forward a deservedly suspicious conspiracy theory. So with solve here there's a problem here with expertise and it's very, very confounding. So where to from there? Is that his last word on expertise or does he take it even further?
01:01:48
Speaker
Well, it seems ultimately what Kasama's arguing about when it comes to conspiracy theories in the upper case is that we can rely upon experts telling us which conspiracy theories are false, which is, of course, a recipe for the powerful to tell us that conspiracy theories in the lower case are conspiracy theories in the
Political Strategies for Rebuttal
01:02:07
Speaker
upper case. and Indeed, the fact he points out that governments often promote conspiracy theories in the uppercase which leads to people reacting to those conspiracy theories in the uppercase with conspiracy theories in the uppercase of their own compounds the issue and he seems to recognize this because and I quote, a political response to conspiracy theories in the uppercase will need to do at least three things.
01:02:32
Speaker
Make the case that many uppercase conspiracy theories are forms of political propaganda, rather than serious attempts to tell the truth. Show that one can criticise capital C, capital T conspiracy theories without being an apologist for government misconduct. And be careful to respect the distinction between conspiracy theories in the uppercase and conspiracy theories in the lower case. In addition, obviously enough, there is one thing that an effective political response to conspiracy theory should definitely refrain from doing, namely promoting and spreading a different set of conspiracy theories. Now I don't think he's convincingly shown
01:03:14
Speaker
that capital C, capital T conspiracy theories are always forms of political propaganda. Indeed, he even admits there are some examples of what appears to be capital C, capital T conspiracy theories like the Elvis is dead set of conspiracy theories. They seem to have no political content whatsoever. He doesn't seem to respect that the people that he puts forward as conspiracy apologists are people who actually do make a distinction between conspiracy theories in the lower case and conspiracy theories in the upper case. And thirdly, he's not even careful in maintaining that distinction despite the fact he claims that's something we need to respect.
01:04:03
Speaker
Yes, so that that bit at the end saying you should definitely refrain from promoting and spreading a different set of conspiracy theories, was that a reference to Sunstein and Vermeule? Or is it just a general point he's making there? I think it's just a general point he's making there. Because it's a yeah because because you sort of said before, he didn't criticise Sunstein and Vermeule for the things that people usually do, but that almost sounded like he was, but it made me maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
01:04:31
Speaker
yeah That might be an inadvertent criticism of Sunstein and the Mule in this particular case. Now he does say he's had success in dissuading left-wing people from believing conspiracy theories by pointing out that they're right-wing propaganda. and And this is a snide point on my part, but I do wonder, did you really have success in that?
01:04:54
Speaker
Or did he do that thing where you hit someone over the head with your argument so much, you go, oh yeah, fine, okay, I don't i don't believe that theory anymore, turns head, continues talking about that theory to so someone else in the conversation, because I i can't quite see how this is a convincing argument. Josh, that conspiracy theory you believe about, about the invasion of Iraq for with weapons of mass destruction,
01:05:22
Speaker
That's antisemitic right wing propaganda. You don't believe that now, do you? I've dissuaded you from believing that theory again in future, right? Completely 100%. Right? Yes. Yeah. that That's what I thought. So yeah, I mean, also anecdotal data.
01:05:40
Speaker
isn't very useful in a philosophical argument, truth be told. Anyway, but yes, let us just try to bring this chapter to its eventual conclusion. So here's a section. Here's a section I think we should talk about.
01:05:57
Speaker
A factor in the thinking of many conspiracy apologists, if not conspiracy theorists themselves, capital C, capital T, once again making that really close relationship between being a conspiracy apologist and a capital C, capital T conspiracy theorist, is the concern that people who attack uppercase conspiracy theories are, if not actual government agents, still doing the government's dirty work.
01:06:23
Speaker
After all, it's undeniable that uppercase conspiracy theories tend to identify the government or its agents as conspirators. It's also undeniable that there is plenty of evidence of government misconduct in liberal democracies as well as in totalitarian states.
01:06:41
Speaker
One can argue about how often that misconduct takes the form of conspiracies, but there can be no debate about the frequency with which governments of all political persuasions in all political systems behave badly and expect to get away with it. That being so, does it follow that being a critic of uppercase conspiracy theories means being an apologist for the poor behaviour of people on power that uppercase conspiracy theories are trying to highlight?
01:07:10
Speaker
From this standpoint, it doesn't particularly matter whether a particular uppercase conspiracy theory is literally true. It's interesting he's now saying that he's intimating an uppercase conspiracy theory could be true. What matters is the bigger picture. The fact that governments and their agents are often up to no good.
01:07:31
Speaker
The general point still stands regardless of the merits of a given conspiracy theory in the uppercase. Once again, now these uppercase conspiracy theories might have some evidence going for them, and people who attack conspiracy theories in the uppercase are denying a deeper truth about politics and power to which these theories give expression. um And I want to know, given what he's just written there, how he squares this with his talk of philosophers as conspiracy apologists, because he writes,
01:08:05
Speaker
it's easier for governments to dismiss criticism of their conduct if they can point to factual inaccuracies in these criticisms A good rule of thumb for government critics should be not to do anything to diminish their own credibility. And this means not flirting with speculative and esoteric conspiracy theories in the uppercase for which there is no real evidence.
01:08:31
Speaker
Not worrying about the literal truth of one's accusations and focusing on the bigger picture is self-defeating, because it's easier for other people to ignore the bigger picture when they can point to obvious flaws in one's theories. It's always best to stick with known facts and avoid ill-formed speculation.
01:08:51
Speaker
And I want to know, how have these conspiracy apologists of David Cody and Charles Pigdon done this? I mean, isn't he actually describing the kind of philosophical view that both Charles and David are trying to put forward?
01:09:06
Speaker
yeah it doesn't Yeah, I'm really not sure where he's coming from, to be honest, reading this sort of thing. He earlier on he just he just just flat out stated that the two of them are conspiracy apologists, having given a fairly clear definition of it that relied on his his capital c ah Capital T conspiracy theories.
01:09:27
Speaker
so the interbe yeah because again I assume he he doesn't refer to David and Charles by name in this bit. He's just talking about conspiracy ecologists. He's forgotten that he that he specifically labeled these people, specific individuals earlier up when he's talking about things in general down here.
01:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, and it gets worse because he writes. An effective political strategy against conspiracy theories in the upper case needs to stress the distinction between conspiracy theories in the upper case and conspiracy theories in the lower case. Failure to do so leaves one open to accusations of bad faith or naivete. Conspiracy theorists like to defend their theories by pointing to well-documented examples of actual conspiracies such as Watergate or Operation Northwoods.
01:10:18
Speaker
In reply, one needs to acknowledge that theories about conspiracies can be well-founded. However, to state the obvious, just because some theories about conspiracies are well-founded, it doesn't follow that they all are. The plausibility of one conspiracy theory doesn't extend to all others. On the other hand, accepting that some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true should help to correct any impression that one can see no wrong when it comes to government conduct.
01:10:48
Speaker
And once again, isn't this what David and Charles are advocating for? They are the ones who are making the distinction between, look, if we're going to talk about conspiracy theories, we do need to realize there are some bad conspiracy theories out there, and also some which turn out to be justified be beliefs. And so we need to be careful about the kind of examples we use and the way we use evidence. And we shouldn't use a broad brush to generalize about these things. And yet, apparently, this is a problem for the conspiracy apologists.
01:11:22
Speaker
even though, as Kasam described them in chapter 3, this is what they're doing. Yeah, he doesn't even doesn't even countenance the possibility of sort of a particularist viewpoint. He's he's decided right up the top that yes, we can make these general distinctions between his capital C conspiracy theories and lowercase conspiracy theories, and therefore you need to make this distinction if you're going to talk about them. But yeah, he he doesn't he He certainly doesn't argue against particularism, he's just sort of just sort of put forward his own view as though that's the only possible one, but hasn't argued for that. And as you'll have probably noted, there's not much discussion of the philosophical literature in this book. So you get b Brian, you get Steve Clark, you get Charles Pigton, you get David Coady.
01:12:17
Speaker
And that's about it. There might be a reference to Johal Reicher's work somewhere in there as well. But for a book written and published in 2019, there's not much discussion of the quite big literature on conspiracy theories in philosophy at this time. Especially since he went right back to Brian's 1999 paper when he was talking about him as well.
01:12:44
Speaker
And he notes in the introduction that his earlier work in The Monast had been criticized, which is why he's changed his view on conspiracy theories. So he's willing to admit there was sustained criticism of that view, and one of the people who engaged in sustained criticism of that view was myself, and yet references to the literature are kept to a minimum in this book almost as if he's not willing to read what philosophers have to say, and is willing to select just a few papers to get a general gist of it without ever engaging with the literature.
01:13:27
Speaker
So are we done? Are we at the end? resta Well we are, because he ends the chapter with his multi-track strategy for dealing with conspiracy theories and the people who promote them. And there are three components to this strategy. And Josh, I want to see what do you think of these stratagems.
01:13:51
Speaker
Fridgeon 1, rebuttal. Wherever possible, use arguments and evidence to rebut conspiracy theories. I mean that that sounds fair enough. If if if if you can mount a a competing argument, I guess, and you can appeal to facts and what have you, then there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that. Now, admittedly, he's already said that conspiracy theorists are so have a self-sealing belief system, so they're just not going to accept arguments and evidence against them. But maybe he's more concerned about those moderate conspiracy theorists. This new class isn't adequately defined. all right
01:14:29
Speaker
stratagem to Education. Equip people at an early age with the critical thinking skills and intellectual virtues that will help them to distinguish between truth and lies, information and disinformation. But education must also include moral education about the evils of the racist and extremist ideologies that is the function of conspiracy theories to promote. I mean, it doesn't sound too bad. It sounds a lot like what Neil Levy concluded in his book. The moral education about the evils of racist and extremist ideologies, I mean, yeah, I guess that is something people people should be made aware of.
01:15:10
Speaker
Although he then chucks his own little that is the function of conspiracy theories to promote that's that that was his Yeah, it's one of those stratagems. you It starts well and then you go Not quite sure about these additions you keep adding on here, but the first part great. Hmm. Yes and Stratagem 3 Elting make sure that people have a proper understanding of the function of conspiracy theories as propaganda and of the causes they promote I mean, yeah that that kind of sounds like he's outing, make sure that everybody agrees with me. um does there That seemed to be going specifically for, here are the points that I've been putting forward in this book, and so everybody needs to make sure they agree with that. and it doesn't It doesn't sound, on the face of it, it doesn't sound terrible, but it also sounds a lot like he's just kind of putting himself up as
01:16:05
Speaker
as the be-all and the end-all of what we should do about conspiracy theories. And also, wasn't that just part of education? Because the education part has about well you think so yeah yeah yeah the the evils of conspiracy theories. So it's actually two stratagems. But two stratagems always looks weird when it's paginated. So you have to have three. But the third one is actually the second one just reiterated. It pretty much is actually, yes, yeah.
01:16:32
Speaker
yeah And so he he finishes the book with, we need to be as relentless in opposing conspiracy theories, capital C, capital T, as the conspiracy theorists, capital C, capital T, are in spreading them. If this book has a single take-home message, it is this.
01:16:52
Speaker
Conspiracy theories are harmful. To understand this and to understand all the different ways in which they are harmful is to understand that not fighting back against them is simply not an option. It gets quite, um what's the word, polemical? Polymic, yeah. As far as is as it goes on, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I was definitely turned off the whole thing by chapter three, where he starts getting getting footloose and fancy free with his definitions.
01:17:21
Speaker
And he really doesn't, I mean, he certainly doesn't, he he he doesn't consider and argue against opposing positions to his, which he must know there are. So yeah, it'll, it'll, it'll, to me, you ended up being that kind of, kind of, I don't know, self-serving perhaps?
01:17:39
Speaker
Which is why Part 3 is going to be interesting, because in The Year of Our Lord 2023, Kasam wrote an article for the journal Society, and it's basically a summary of this book. Can you guess what the name of the article is?
01:18:00
Speaker
Is it conspiracy theories? Same as the book? It is, very confusingly. He wrote a book in 2019 called Conspiracy Theories and then wrote an article in 2023, well published in January of 2023, so written in 2022, also called Conspiracy Theories. I think there should be a law against that because it makes talking about conspiracy theories versus conspiracy theories quite difficult. So we're going to have the issue of when we review that article in the next episode, not just, actually, so I'm gonna say not just distinguishing between conspiracy theories with capital Cs, capital Ts, and conspiracy theories with lower case Cs and lower case Ts, but also the book conspiracy theories and then his modification of the view of the article conspiracy theories. But Josh, I do have a boon to give you.
01:18:56
Speaker
whatter tell tell me of the spon So in the 2023 article he's given up on the capitalisation. Good? Does that make it more or less confusing? No, that makes it worse. Right, so he is still... Not that in a fortnight. Okay, I cannot wait.
01:19:13
Speaker
i' I'm abuzz with anticipation. You're palpitating with anticipation. I'm literally palpitating as we speak. Can we stop talking about this now? We'll give our final thoughts at the end of the surprise part three. Yeah, yeah so before we go, a little bit of news, which we're not putting in the bonus episodes anymore, but there are a couple of things we really should talk about.
01:19:38
Speaker
so Maybe a news chime would be in order. Yeah, let's put a news chime in right about here.
01:19:55
Speaker
So, Josh, Trump almost got assassinated. Almost got assassinated. Didn't actually get assassinated, or actually got shot. He almost, almost got assassinated. Yes, someone almost attempted to assassinate him, but was stuck were stopped before they could go forwards with their attempt. Because he was out golfing.
01:20:17
Speaker
And I'm not telling you, golf is a terrible sport, and this is more evident of why people shouldn't golf. To be honest, I've heard relatively little about this one. I mean, I guess obviously the previous attempt actually you know drew came close enough that it drew blood. So whereas this one was just a guy got picked up.
01:20:36
Speaker
who was on his way to try and assassinate Trump, but but never've even never even got the opportunity is as less newsworthy. It is kind of indicating that people don't seem to actually care that much about the attempts on Donald Trump's life, which seems slightly fascinating in an election season that could decide the fate of America.
01:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, so and and not having heard much about it, there was a bit of discussion earlier. I gather the guy was, again, similar. what Obviously, what wasn't a clear, rabid Democrat anti-Trump person. He seemed to be, again, like the previous one.
01:21:16
Speaker
a bit more central in his views and certainly had supported Trump in the past in some areas but I have not heard any particular sort of conspiracy theories around this one that I assume there have been some. Well he did go to Ukraine in order to try to sign up for the military there to aid Ukraine in repelling Russia, which of course has led to people like Alex Jones saying he's a ah deep state plant who belongs to the American military, et cetera, et cetera. I make you willll probably have more information about him though, because I think he was only properly arraigned for whatever they're going to try to prosecute him for as of
01:21:59
Speaker
today this time in the U.S. at time of recording. I'm actually quite curious to know what they've charged him with, because they can't charge him with attempted assassination, because he didn't actually attempt to assassinate Trump. It was simply thought that had he come with a attempted attempted assassination, he would have attempted to assassinate him, but they stopped him before the attempt of assassination could be attempted.
01:22:23
Speaker
So he's probably only got with ah a firearms charge. And that's going to be difficult for the Republicans to fight against because they're all four people having guns. Yes, we'll have to see. You can't not mention it, but I don't know that there's a hell of a lot to say at
Media Focus on Trump's Conspiracy Theories
01:22:39
Speaker
this particular point in time. The thing which struck me when I was thinking about it before we started recording today is that when Trump first ran for president,
01:22:50
Speaker
And we brought in the Trumpitorium. We brought it in because there was just too much discussion of Trump-related conspiracy theories in that 2016 election. And I don't know whether it's because the media has become inured to it, but there seems to be less focus on the conspiratorial aspect of the things Trump says and more focus on the he's just a bit of a bumbling idiot when he speaks. And J.D. Vance just lies about things all the time. And I just don't know whether it's because my media habits have changed or whether the media has changed. But we don't seem to have as much Trump conspiracy related news this time around. Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah, I think it may be, yeah as you say, just sort of a bit of a bit of fatigue, which often seemed to be their strategy. Just so many gaffes and and blunders and inappropriate stuff that is eventually just all blurred into one and nobody paid any attention to individual things that he did.
01:23:55
Speaker
So maybe maybe, yeah, maybe their strategy has worked and that's why we're not seeing as many, which is possibly a worry. But maybe it's just because people are less interested in talking about the guy, which is possibly positive. I don't know.
01:24:10
Speaker
Hard to tell, I guess we'll make that decision after the election. Yes, I think we might have to. and Now. Now thing. Yes, the other thing that we really and can't let go without comment is the exploding pages in Lebanon. its go go i When I first heard the stories about it, people didn't seem entirely clear on the mechanism by which it happened. there was To begin with, there was a sort of a James Bond kind of ah a theory that these were just ordinary pages and people had discovered a way that you can like send a magical signal to it and immediately overload its battery and make it explode or something. But I gather now the theory is that no these were things that had been wrecked and and were were were made and and was engineered so that they would fall into the hands of
01:24:57
Speaker
Hezbollah people. Is that is that the card? Yes, because it turns out that Hezbollah leadership has been using pages as a communication system for a while now, because they thought it was a system which basically couldn't be hacked. So those pages which work on a fairly antique SMS style so system, you have a central system that sends a message out. So thus you can't really locate the pages, the pages simply locate the kind of central hub that messages are being sent from. And it seems that whoever is responsible for the attack, and we should point out that at this stage, the government of Israel and Mossad have not taken responsibility for the attack, but they have they have done the jolly good show. I can't imagine whoever it was who did this. Yes, good job. which occurred within a few days before.
01:25:57
Speaker
Israel started attacking Lebanon to escalate de-escalation according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They need to escalate the situation with Hezbollah in order to produce de-escalation in the region, which is like having sex for virginity. It just seems like one of those things. i don't think the words mean anything, let alone what you're to you're trying to imply that they mean. But yeah, so no one has actually formally taken responsibility, but it is
01:26:39
Speaker
very likely that it's a massage operation in le Lebanon where they've managed to get a whole bunch of pages or have managed to get at the production line of a whole bunch of page pages, introduce explosive elements into those pages and then have the pages distributed in Lebanon without anyone being a aware that they have been doctored. And it's a really big question as to who built the pages because they're branded as gold Apollo pages
01:27:23
Speaker
which would suggest they come from the Taiwanese company of the same name, who do indeed produce pages. But Gold Apollo said no, they licensed that particular brand out to a Hungarian company, BAC Consulting KFT. And so there seems to be a lot of blame being shared around as to who built the pages and thus where the interception of materials actually occurred.
01:27:52
Speaker
Yes, so everything's very unclear again at this point, but there's no denying that some sort of conspiracy was involved, so um we can't we can't not mention it, and it does seem to be sort of a non... I guess a new thing, but... um i like, I don't know how much of a sort of, you know, a new front and warfare this' is going to be given that it was targeting a basically obsolete technology that was only being used by this particular case. So I don't know. I've not even also said it, given that it's sort of less discriminate, not not not completely indiscriminate, if it was targeted enough, these things were
01:28:32
Speaker
deliberately given to people in Hezbollah, but it doesn't seem to be forming a specific sort of military objective, and it's more about a psychological objective, which we w fits the definition of terrorism quite nicely. So it's possibly not surprising that any any state actors haven't taken responsibility for it, because they' there would there would be some fairly pointed questions to answer at that stage.
01:28:59
Speaker
Yes, it does seem like it's a textbook definition of a terror attack. so so yeah So interesting times, interesting times. You know what else is interesting?
01:29:13
Speaker
The first chapter of your book, probably. Well, then we should probably talk about that in a patron bonus episode. I'm also now thinking, given that the last two new segments we've had have been ever so slightly depressing, we should probably do the news before we do the main content of the episode, because otherwise we end up going, yep, and then a terrorist attack could. Let's do a patron bonus episode. Let's try to get that energy up. Yes.
01:29:37
Speaker
yeah no but that's what we're gonna do we're gonna stop recording this episode we're gonna record a bonus episode for our bonus bonus patrons who deserve all the bonuses we can heap upon them uh and if you you wish to add yourself to their number you can go to patreon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy you can just sign yourself up and you'll get access to um to to to as many patron bonus episodes as we can funnel into your face holes uh and that's a fact but you're so you're so aggressive with our hey patrons, always forcing them to listen to episodes, funneling things into faceholes. It's what's best for them. And I really have no justification. I cannot disagree. All I can say is, bone us? No, bone you. Exactly. And on that erudite sound bite, I think it's time to go. And I know it's time to go, in fact, because now is the time when I say goodbye. When I say good day, sir, I say good day.
01:30:35
Speaker
The podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy stars Josh Addison and myself, Associate Professor M.R.X. Denton. Our show's cons... sorry... Producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor. You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider joining our Patreon.
01:31:12
Speaker
And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.