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Conspirituality Emerges! (Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre)
36 Plays1 year ago
Josh and M look at “The Emergence of Conspirituality” by Charlotte Ward & Prof. David Voas, the prequel to a paper of Dean Ballinger's (RIP) that we looked at last year.
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Transcript
Intro: Weather and Macau Visit
00:00:00
Speaker
So, how's China? Warm and moist. Just like... No, no, she had cancer. I'm not going to do that. Anything interesting to report?
00:00:09
Speaker
I went to Macau and gave a talk. And how was that? Also warm and moist. God dammit, stop trying to set me up. He said you're up for my mum. Why Josh, I didn't know you were that way inclined. I'm sure mum would love a bit of company though. Stop it. He has back home these days as her pussy. And mum's not so agile that she can play with her pussy much these days. God dammit.
00:00:32
Speaker
What's wrong, Josh? I'm just talking about my mother's pussy. I mean, you've seen it a few times. No, no, no, no, no. This is meant to be a classy podcast by educated people talking about rarefied topics. And pop culture. And pop culture. Sometimes your mum jokes, but this has gone too far.
00:00:54
Speaker
Okay, I admit, it has gone a bit too far. I will resign from these attempts to get you to talk about my mother's pussy. How are things back home? Cold and wet. Mmm, just like... No, no. Roll the theme.
Podcast Introduction: Hosts and Locations
00:01:13
Speaker
The podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy featuring Josh Addison and Em Denton.
00:01:24
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and back in Zhuhai, China, it's associate professor, M.R. Extentis. You're back in China. Indeed, sitting in place in Zhuhai, sweltering, we're actually not sweltering in the heat because we've got the air conditioning on in my apartment, but enjoying, if enjoying the right word, enduring. I am enduring in the Chinese summer.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, so like I said in last week's full episode, we may have neglected to mention to our wider listenership that Enma is going back to China to take up a position at Zhuhai University once again, but that's what's happened. Well, basically no normal university in Zhuhai. I don't think there is technically a Zhuhai university. There are in fact several universities in Zhuhai.
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, there you go. A university in Juhai is where you are, and will remain for the time being. It's true, apart from when I say pop out to go other places. So remaining is a relative term. Yes. So it'll be internet recordings from now, with all the potential connectivity issues that that entails. But we managed it last time, so I assume we'll be able to do it again this time.
00:02:49
Speaker
presumably, presumably. So we'll probably have more connection issues this week than in future weeks, because this is the first teaching week, which is also the week where students return to campus.
Internet Connectivity Challenges
00:03:04
Speaker
And so what we're finding is that the network is kind of just falling all over the place as IT is trying to get the network to adjust from having no one on campus using it to everyone on campus using it at the same time.
00:03:18
Speaker
Right. Well, in that case, let's talk quickly and make use of the connectivity while we have it. Yes, let's emerge and be conspirat... ...spiritual? Conspiratualistic? Something like that. Play a chime, then we'll explain what
Introducing Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre
00:03:36
Speaker
we're talking about. No, you play a chime. Fine. Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
00:03:49
Speaker
It's a conspiracy theory masterpiece, sort of, again. We do a few of the classics from outside of philosophy. I think there are two more on the list, maybe three, and then we'll return back to our regularly scheduled program of looking at more recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory, where we have recent material which probably isn't
00:04:18
Speaker
old enough to technically be called a masterpiece but will be part of Masterpiece Theatre nonetheless. Because Josh, what is a name? What is a name? I mean I'm asking you seriously, what is a name? You're a linguist, what are names? A special class of noun, essentially. Well that just sounds rude.
00:04:40
Speaker
It is. No, but we're not talking about names today. We're talking about conspiratuality and not for the first time, only we are sort of. The paper we're going to look at today is The Emergence of Conspiratuality by Charlotte Warden, Professor David Vos, which was published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, January 2011.
Exploring 'The Emergence of Conspiratuality'
00:05:01
Speaker
Now,
00:05:01
Speaker
You may recall that last year we looked at the posthumously published paper from the Daily Departives, Dean Ballinger, but more alliteration in that sentence than I was expecting. But he wrote with with Anne Hardy the paper, Conspiratuality in the Web, a case study of David Icke's media use, which was based on the paper that we're going to talk about today. And we'll see where possibly he differs in the in some of the conclusions that come up. But yes, so this is a paper in
00:05:31
Speaker
Would you call this religious studies? Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, it is very much in the intersection of media studies and religious studies. And yet the focus on spirituality, particularly New Age spiritualism, I think very much puts it at the center of a kind of religion and society perspective.
00:05:54
Speaker
So the paper itself tells us about its authors. According to the paper itself, Charlotte Ward is an independent researcher on alternative spirituality. David Vos is Simon Professor of Population Studies in the Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester. Now Josh, do you think that they called the Simon Professor after someone whose literal name was Simon Professor? Hello, my name is Professor. Simon Professor.
00:06:19
Speaker
Or maybe someone called a Professor Simon, like maybe Paul Simon was the Professor at the University of Manchester at some point. He might have been, I don't know.
00:06:28
Speaker
You can't prove he wasn't. I mean, you won't prove he wasn't, you probably could. But at any rate, Dov vos is the British National Program Director for the European Value Study and Co-Director of British Religion and Numbers, founded, funded, got the right noun eventually, right vowel eventually, by the A-H-R-C slash E-S-R-C, Religion and Society Research Program. I don't know what those things mean, but they sound impressive.
00:06:53
Speaker
ESRC will be Art and Humanities Research Something. ESRC might be European Society of Religious Something. Probably. So this paper, despite not being a philosophy paper, starts like one with an abstract. Now I'm certain, I went back and checked, you definitely read the abstract last time, so it's definitely my turn to read it this time. Why are you so obsessed with reading the abstracts?
00:07:21
Speaker
It's all I have in life. It's the one joy I possess. It's true. I mean, you've got children and a partner and a successful job, but really the only thing that gives you pleasure is reading abstracts to academic papers. It's a very unusual kink, Josh, but I'm here for it.
00:07:39
Speaker
It's what gets me up in the morning. I bet it gets you up in the morning. The abstract reads, the female-dominated new age with its positive focus on self and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory with its negative focus on global politics may seem antithetical. There's a synthesis of the two, however, that we call conspiratuality. We refine, describe, and analyze this hybrid system of belief that has been noticed before without receiving much scholarly
Core Beliefs of Conspiratuality
00:08:07
Speaker
attention.
00:08:08
Speaker
Conspirituality is a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad political-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age.
00:08:30
Speaker
One, a secret group covertly controls or is trying to control the political and social order. And two, humanity is undergoing a paradigm shift in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian new world order is to act in accordance with an awakened new paradigm worldview.
00:08:49
Speaker
Mmm, shades of references to victory of the Daleks there with the new paradigm Daleks that Stephen Moffat made up that never ever got featured in Doctor Who heavily ever again. I think I remember the ones you made.
00:09:05
Speaker
but I don't really care to be perfectly honest. Fair enough, fair enough. I mean, your distaste for Doctor Who, your visceral hatred for a British classic is noted on this podcast and is condemned by the listenership.
00:09:20
Speaker
More like antipathy, but yes. So, it's not enough to start with an abstract, they then start with an introduction. What are they thinking? Introducing things. So the introduction says,
00:09:37
Speaker
The growth of industry, cities and administrative structures has led to the separation and specialisation of social institutions. Individuals themselves occupy distinct roles in the family, workplace and community that may no longer overlap. The social and personal fragmentation has caused conventional religion to become disconnected from everyday life.
00:09:56
Speaker
Alternative ideologies are available, however, offering holistic worldviews that contest the political pragmatism, economic rationalism, scientific empiricism, and social dislocation characteristic of the modern age. Examples include the Romantic Movement that began in the late 18th century and the counterculture of the 1960s. In this article, we focus on two forms of holistic thought that are increasingly prevalent in the contemporary period.
00:10:20
Speaker
And of course the two forms of holistic thought that you're going to be talking about are new age and conspiracy theories.
00:10:28
Speaker
which they
Conspiracy Theories vs. New Age Spirituality
00:10:29
Speaker
define briefly in the introduction, but they're going to talk about them in a bit more detail later on, so we can skip ahead from that bit. Well, except we can't, because one of the definitions they use at the very beginning is David Oronovic's definition, which comes from his journalistic book looking at conspiracy theories.
00:10:51
Speaker
And I just have a bit of an issue that every so often they're not using other scholars who work in conspiracy theory theory to get their theory from. They're going to journalists writing on conspiracy theories instead. So there's a definition from Aronovitch, which is problematic because his book is incredibly inconsistent.
00:11:13
Speaker
and its approach to both talking about conspiracy theories and also what he thinks is a conspiracy theory and isn't a conspiracy theory. And then later on in the paper, they start citing Robin Ramsey, who's another journalist.
00:11:28
Speaker
who writes on conspiracy theories. And this is not to besmirch the work of journalists, but if you're going to do a kind of rigorous analysis of a concept, it would be much better to be reaching towards the academic work. Now, admittedly, they do mention Michel Bakun,
00:11:46
Speaker
in the very early part of the paper and then in the second part. So they are reaching towards scholars working in the area, but this reliance on journalistic definitions is, I think, a little bit distracting from the kind of work they're trying to do, especially given how ambiguous the definitions of Oranovich and Ramsey turn out to be. They don't really narrow onto a concept.
00:12:11
Speaker
they're kind of broad brush conceptualizations, which I think is a problem with this paper as well. Yes, I think sources might be an issue as we go through it. But for now, having given their definitions, they say a hybrid of conspiracy theory and alternative spirituality has appeared on the internet.
00:12:29
Speaker
The existence of such a synthesis has previously been noted in passing, and here they cite Bakun and also Goodrich Clark. But no detailed account has yet been given of what, for the sake of convenience we call, conspiratuality. And so they go on to say that these two ideologies, conspiracy, theorizing, and new age, they have stuff in common, in particular as they put it, the beliefs that A, nothing happens by accident, B, nothing is as it seems, C, everything is connected.
00:12:57
Speaker
But of course, they're also quite different in some respects. So as they put it, there's a wide gulf between the ordinary understandings of conspiracy theory and the holistic milieu. The former is male-dominated, often conservative, generally pessimistic and typically concerned with current affairs. The latter is predominantly female, liberal, self-consciously optimistic, and largely focused on the self and personal relationships, which
00:13:24
Speaker
The male dominated and female dominated, I guess they will cite statistics shortly, but some of those definitions, some of those characterizations are not 100% on. Well, yeah, especially if you know anything about the rise, and I'm going to, I want to put scare quotes around a lot of what I'm going to say here, because you look at the rise of alternative spirituality, so the rise of Wicca and various forms of modern paganism.
00:13:53
Speaker
in the middle of the 20th century. These are not movements which are at least initially led by women. They're actually movements that are largely led by male academics who are going through a process of trying to recover pre-Christian religious or spiritual ideas. So the idea that we've got this quite clear disconnect between men engaging in conspiracy theorizing,
00:14:20
Speaker
and woman engaging in being spiritual, particularly New Age spiritualism, is I think a gross overgeneralization. I mean, I know it seems on the face of it that when you think about conspiracy theorists, most of the exemplary conspiracy theorists you think of turn out to be men like Alex Jones, David Icke, Tucker Carlson, and the like. And when you look at the modern spiritualist movement,
00:14:50
Speaker
it seems like it's a kind of even mix between your David Ikes who's very very spiritualist depending on the kind of theories trying to promote and members such as the cult of Isis and the like but I do I do think this hard and fast distinction they're trying to run here
00:15:07
Speaker
run to the risk of over-generalizing to the point where there are so many exceptions, you can go, yeah, I'm not entirely sure, I'm with you by page three. So nevertheless, they've pointed out some fairly large differences between these two fields, but they want to say that they go together, or they can go together, and they say,
Emergence of Conspiratuality: Internet and Print Media
00:15:30
Speaker
We argue that conspiratuality is a political-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age. So there's one, a secret group convertly controls or is trying to control the political and social order, and two, humanity is undergoing a paradigm shift in consciousness or awareness, so solutions to one lie in acting in accordance with an awakened new paradigm worldview.
00:15:58
Speaker
Now, first thing I want to note is that that also describes the Illuminati and, you know, the original Bavarian Illuminati, a secret group which is covertly trained to control the political and social order in Germany.
00:16:18
Speaker
and producing a paradigm shift in how people should think about the world, the idea of freedom, equality, and liberty. So this kind of conspiratoriality, at least at this particular point,
00:16:34
Speaker
is something we can find historically. It's not new. It's not linked to the new age. It certainly isn't linked to modern technologies allowing ideas to travel across the globe. We can find historical precedence where this kind of thing has been going on.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yes, although the characterization of what conspiratuality is is still a little bit nebulous at this stage. But so they state their intentions going forwards. They say, in what follows we describe conspiratuality and its formation, starting by examining the parent sectors and then considering the emerger.
00:17:11
Speaker
We focus on the US and the UK. While our aim is primarily descriptive to point to the existence of an important branch of contemporary spirituality that is little recognized, we offer some hypotheses concerning its origins, current appeal, and future prospects. And that's what they do.
00:17:27
Speaker
First, there's the little section on methods where they talk about how they've gathered their data, which they start by saying, because conspiratuality appears to be an internet-based movement with a relatively modest presence in quote-unquote real life, web ethnography is the method of choice. They go on to talk about the various websites that they've looked at and how regularly they've gone to them and so on. Now, I do recall that Dean's recent paper,
00:17:54
Speaker
argued that, at least using David Icke as a case study, he argued that conspiratuality has what he called a synergistic media model, and that it was not just internet-based.
Web Ethnography in Conspiratuality
00:18:03
Speaker
In particular, in the case of David Icke, he's got his books and his tours of speaking appearances, as well as his internet presence. And David Icke dot connector.
00:18:14
Speaker
They all work together. But nevertheless, the internet is what they're focusing on on this particular paper. And as they say, they first have two sections talking about New Age spirituality and conspiracy theory, and then go on to talk about them coming together into spirituality.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, and they state here that how one defines the New Age is not important for present purposes. And then they say, but we'll adopt a summary by Bakun of Melton's characterisation of the New Age. I kind of feel that's a really interesting dodge, because it turns out
00:18:54
Speaker
what the New Age is is very important for their notion of conspiratuality because as it stands, the discussion of conspiratuality is conspiracism in the pejorative sense, linked with a notion of spirituality.
00:19:10
Speaker
But the way they're defining it, it's spirituality only of a modern or new age form. So they're not going to be linking conspiracism with, say, generic religious belief, which I kind of find fascinating because there's a lot to be said about the dovetailing of religious belief and conspiracy theory belief, both in a pejorative and non pejorative sense.
00:19:36
Speaker
So the fact they go, oh, it doesn't really matter what the definition of New Age is, I think it really does matter. I think it matters an awful lot. Yes. So the definition that they give here, which is back on quoting Melton, is that the New Age includes the following elements, mystical individual transformation and awareness of new non-material realities, the imposition of a personal vision onto society and belief in universally invisible but pervasive forms of energy.
00:20:05
Speaker
And I want to know, how is that different from normal religious belief? How is that wage belief? Well, yes. I mean, they talk about some of the more examples in it, what the cynical might call hippie stuff. They talk about people being light workers, star seeds, indigo children. Is that still a thing? No. Indigo children, it's around there.
00:20:29
Speaker
That sort of stuff. I think the last time we heard about indigo children were indigo girls. Yes. And so again, they make the claim that the new age remains largely feminine, but they sort of, they illustrate this, we're actually saying, making the claim that the larger voices, the most prominent figures in the new age movement are women. They quote in particular, Diana Cooper, a prominent new age figure.
00:20:59
Speaker
and point out the fact that she's all about positivity and somewhat opposed to conspiracy theory. They quote her saying, be careful what you read on the internet. If it's spreading doubt
New Age Consciousness Shift
00:21:10
Speaker
and fear, move on to a site of love and light.
00:21:13
Speaker
They try to again set up this idea that their characterization of the New Age does seem to be opposed to conspiracy theorizing in some way. There's a little subsection here called the New Age belief in a shift in consciousness, which again, they're emphasizing the idea that there's a growing belief in New Age ideologies that there's this paradigm shift, a shift in human consciousness is happening, which
00:21:39
Speaker
does sound familiar from some of the IKEA stuff, I guess.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, it's also a fairly common feature in a lot of world religions as well. Once again, because they're alighting the discussion of exactly what the new age is and just being very vague about what counts as the new age, a lot of what they say about new age spirituality or mysticism seems to also be something you can apply to the old age spiritualities or religions as well.
00:22:11
Speaker
And I remember having a discussion once with David Robertson, who also does work in this area, and he was kind of chastising philosophers for being too obsessed with defining terms and not just getting on with the work. But I do think one of the reasons why we want to define terms is to be able to go, well, look, when we talk about the new age, we're talking very specifically
00:22:34
Speaker
about a set of spiritual practices which had certain features and the problem with this article is that it's trying to be all things to all people and it's relying on the well you know what the new age is as you say it's that kind of hippie stuff
00:22:52
Speaker
And I'm not entirely sure it's that easy to distinguish new age thought from old age thought, especially given one of the things which is really interesting about new age spirituality is how the old religions coped with it. So there was new age spiritualism within Roman Catholicism.
00:23:13
Speaker
where people were taking ideas from the new age and then reapplying it back to that old religion. And so these distinctions are not as hard and fast. Well, no, sorry. If you want to be using these terms, either on something which is hard and fast, or you want to admit that they are fuzzy along the edges.
00:23:34
Speaker
Well, let's see if they do any better with conspiracy theory then. In the next section on conspiracy theory, they say, the term conspiracy theorist tends to be used pejoratively. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, however, the realm of conspiracy theory has gained shape, prominence and even respectability.
00:23:52
Speaker
Unlike the spiritual milieu, this remains a largely male enclave of political and scientific foci. Few good quantitative studies have been concluded, but American conspiracy theorists seem to be primarily a white phenomenon and primarily a white male phenomenon. They're there, they're quoting Ramsey, who as you say, not actually a scholar, more of a journalist.
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, and things like don't necessarily disagree with this claim that American conspiracy theorists seem to be primarily a white phenomenon and primarily a white male phenomenon. I just think you'd be better off citing an actual researcher rather than a journalist.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yes, we're mentioning their own research. They say that of the 40 or so notable theorists who listed on tin wiki, only one of them was female. I had never heard of tin wiki before today. I've got a ration of it. I think I may have heard about it at some point, but I had to go double check exactly what it is. According to the wiki of wikis, or wiki, tin wiki is a wiki that contains articles on pseudoscientific topics. I feel I should add the word wiki in just one more time. Also, Wikiwawu.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yes, so they compare conspiracy theorising with political activism, though, and they note that while, again, politics, or I think they're going for political punditry or political
00:25:17
Speaker
I don't know, noisemaking is a male-dominated activity. They know that activism should not be confused with ideology or casual participation, however. Just as voter turnout is similar among men and women, belief in conspiracy theories divides evenly between the sexes. So while they're saying, so I think, yeah, they seem to be saying that the leading figures in conspiracy theorizing tend to be men, but belief in conspiracy theories is not
00:25:44
Speaker
divided by the sexes. And now the interesting stuff. Now we get a bit of taxonomy.
Categorizing Conspiracy Theories
00:25:50
Speaker
And what a taxonomy this turns out to be. They say an examination of the history of conspiracy theories suggests that in recent decades it has contained four main sectors, all of which overlap and continue to develop.
00:26:02
Speaker
And so the four sectors, they divide conspiracy theories into R. Number one is speculation about specific episodes, what Bakun calls event conspiracy. So here they're talking about specific things, the death of Princess Di, the assassination of JFK, 9-11, particular events that conspiracy theories want to explain.
00:26:22
Speaker
Sector number two is bio and geo conspiracies, which has anything to do with the natural world, I guess. So conspiracy theories around diseases, but also around sort of the suppression of free energy, fluoridation and water conspiracy theories, genetic engineering, weather manipulation.
00:26:42
Speaker
that sort of stuff. Now, sector three, sector three is X-Files type conspiracy theory, which I, they seem to just sort of mean anything that's kind of science fictiony. So in particular, in particular, aliens, extraterrestrials and suppressed alien technology.
00:27:01
Speaker
why isn't free energy and weather control in there? And I mean, given if you're doing X-Files type conspiracy theories, and we take it that Millennium as a spinoff of the X-Files is also part of the X-Files universe, especially since the concluding episode of Millennium was an X-Files episode after Millennium ended. And season two of Millennium is about a government organization releasing a disease upon the world to engage in population control.
00:27:31
Speaker
Why aren't diseases also in the X-Files type conspiracy theory area? I found this distinction between sectors 2 and 3 to be not particularly well motivated.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yes, yes, you may have something there. Finally, sector four is the radical rights belief in a shadow government or new world order. And so here again, they're referring back to Bakunin with his idea of systemic or super conspiracies.
00:28:01
Speaker
And so, their characterisation of your New World Order, One World Government, I guess your illuminates, what have you in here, their characterisation is that they come from the Christian right, but spread to other areas. They don't specifically mention anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which
00:28:21
Speaker
would seem to be one of the major shadowy figures controlling the world type conspiracy theories, but I guess they would come in this sector. Do you have a feeling that these types of conspiracy theories were at least originally coming from the political right?
00:28:38
Speaker
I mean, there are New World Order conspiracy theories on the left as well. So often the right wing New World Order conspiracy theories are about a secret global government and the left wing versions of New World Order conspiracy theories.
00:28:54
Speaker
are about the idea that private corporations are controlling the government from behind the scenes. So both left and right will go, look, there are these malicious forces operating in the background, making our democracies look as if they're free when actually they're not. The right are concerned that actually everything's been controlled by the UN and the left are concerned that actually it's private corporations which are doing the real control behind the background.
00:29:19
Speaker
So whilst I know there's a lot of scholars who will say that these conspiracy theories are more traditionally right-wing than they are left-wing, and I think there might be some evidence that they were predominantly believed by right-wingers more so than left-wingers, we actually do find historical examples of left-wing versions of these particular types of theories as well.
00:29:47
Speaker
But it is this last lot that they seem most interested in. In particular, I think they're wanting to characterize them as coming from the right and particularly the Christian right, because that lets them say how that traditionally people who believe these sorts of conspiracy theories tend to be quite opposed to new age stuff, which is seen as being sort of, you know, a bit occult, a bit satanic.
00:30:08
Speaker
and so therefore not not flavor of the month among the christian right but yes as far as taxonomies go it's uh it's a little murky yes yes it's a very weird taxonomy but i do feel
00:30:25
Speaker
a systemic problem in this paper is they're trying to unify a lot of very disparate processes under one name. And given that they also try to avoid giving some hard and fast definitions to allow us to get to that point, I think there's just a lot of confusion as to what the topic of the paper ends up being.
David Icke's Influence on Conspiratuality
00:30:47
Speaker
Well, let's see if things become clearer in the next section, which is the emergence of conspiratuality.
00:30:53
Speaker
Hey, that's the name of the paper. This section must be important. Well, let's see. It says, despite the shared views mentioned above that nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected, the new age and conspiracy theory seem to have little in common. It is therefore a surprise to discover that hybrid world views have developed and seem to be thriving. British author and activist David Icke anticipated conspiratiality in 1996. Did he now? Apparently.
00:31:20
Speaker
They say conspiratiality appears to be a means by which political cynicism is tempered with spiritual optimism. It curbs the belligerence of conspiracy theory and the self-absorption of the New Age. And it goes on to give examples of sort of both conspiratorial New Age thinking and New Age-y style conspiracism. In particular, here they talk about Zeitgeist, the movie and the movement, which I know we have mentioned.
00:31:48
Speaker
But we talked about the three-part Zeitgeist film, I think in a very early episode of the podcast. And what's fascinating about Zeitgeist was it's a kind of pre-loose change, internet.
00:32:05
Speaker
documentary, I'm now going, actually, is it pre-loose change? Was it just after loose change? But it's one of the early conspiracy theory documents that, documents, documentaries that were very successful online. It's about the international banking system. It also goes into Christianity and Mithridism. It's a very...
00:32:29
Speaker
eclectic documentary and for a period of time it was kind of oh you studied conspiracy theories have you watched zeitgeist and now now i don't think anybody talks about it and this is kind of a problem for a paper from 2011 there's a whole bunch of touchstones which people knew about
00:32:50
Speaker
12 years ago, which of course actually have been supplanted by a whole bunch of new stuff.
'Zeitgeist' and Internet-Driven Conspiratuality
00:32:56
Speaker
Now that's not to the author's detriment here, it's just unfortunately some of the examples. They're writing about contemporary examples at the time, it just turns out the landscape has changed so radically. And this is one of those areas where you just can't guarantee
00:33:14
Speaker
that new readers are going to know about the conspiracy theories that were so popular ten years ago because everyone's obsessed with the conspiracy theories that were popular two or three years ago.
00:33:25
Speaker
I watched the first section of Zeitgeist, and it was linked to by a comedian on Twitter or somewhere. So I assumed it was a joke. And when it started off making these ridiculously historical claims about stuff, I assumed this was the joke, and it was going to be some sort of a look around you style photo documentary. Then they kept going. I'm like, oh, no, they seem to actually mean this.
00:33:52
Speaker
And so last night I was having a drink with my friend Yegor who lives literally one floor up in this apartment building. He said have you watched ancient apocalypse which is the Graham Hancock Netflix series and he said no I don't need to watch any Graham Hancock because I've I've read one of his books he just repeats himself ad nauseam but nonetheless Yegor put it on and we watched a little bit of it and
00:34:20
Speaker
The quality of argumentation that Graham Hancock engages in to prove the existence of an ancient super-civilization, which we apparently have this ancestral memory for, is really, really quite surprising. It is very surprising that someone at Netflix at some point didn't go to Graham and go, you do realize that makes absolutely no argumentative sense whatsoever.
00:34:47
Speaker
But anyway, it's a whole bunch of, but if they're wrong, and my assumption is true, then we can rewrite all, I don't know why I'm doing that accent, we can rewrite all of human history. And Zeitgeist does the same thing. But if we make this new assumption, then we can recast everything we've learned down a different avenue. And that's why unicorns are real.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yes, that's pretty much the tenor of it. But anyway, returning to the paper, they say, regarding the history of conspiratuality, that conspiratuality appeared on the web in the mid-1990s. It had offline precursors, some members of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. The New Age and other movements undoubtedly shared its two core convictions. In 1987, the print-based Nexus magazine started publishing articles on conspiratuality and conspiracist topics.
00:35:39
Speaker
uh my uncle used to get nexus magazine i don't know that i've ever read it the only thing only thing i remember reading in it was a guide to engage in or was it was that the form of dreaming where you think you're lucid dreaming a guide to to get yourself to lucid dream
00:36:01
Speaker
But yes, it was a famous magazine for looking at sometimes slightly out there topics. My uncle was interested in it because they often had quite a lot of articles on the space race, including discussions of technologies that might come into existence in the next decade or so. So it was both
00:36:30
Speaker
a magazine looking at future tech but also did engage in a bit of the old pseudoscientific speculation at the same time.
First-Generation Proponents of Conspiratuality
00:36:40
Speaker
So, going through the history of Conspiratuality, they divide it into two generations. They reckon there's Conspiratuality pre-2001 and then post-2001. I wonder what event that occurred in 2001 could have caused it. Isn't that when we found the monolith on the moon and then we went to Jupiter and what's his name? Bowman, the star child, was first born? Pretty sure that's the most notable event of 2001.
00:37:09
Speaker
That does sound right. Well, let's read on and we'll find out. So they say, talking about the first generation before 2001, conspiratorialities formation divides into two stages or generations. First generation providers started work offline in the early to mid 1990s and then moved online to develop websites in parallel with offline activity. Successful first generation providers include David Ike, David Wilcock, and Steven Greer.
00:37:34
Speaker
I have the successful first generation providers as if you're talking about telecommunication. So they go over those three. They note David Ike's focus on what he likes to talk about coming together to raise consciousness to awaken love, which does sound very, very new agey.
00:37:56
Speaker
So then David Wilcock, which is, is that who you're talking about a second ago? Is it the same? No, no, no, that was Graham Hancock. Oh, Hancock, right. Okay. Yeah, two different different cock entirely. So yes, David Wilcock is someone who writes about how there's going to be
00:38:15
Speaker
or at least in 2011, was writing about how there's going to be a coming spiritual awakening that would shake the shadow government's grip on people. So again, someone who sort of believes in conspiratorial type things about the nature of the world, and yet says there's going to be this awakening of consciousness that'll allow us to do something about it. But is this the first time we've heard from Willcock?
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think he's been mentioned on the podcast before. I mean, I know his name from discussions in the 40 and times, but once again, he was someone who was more prominent 10 years ago than he is today, in the same way that the next person they mentioned, Stephen Greer, who's a ufologist who believes in the shadow world government,
00:38:57
Speaker
He's also someone who was very popular ten years ago, and occasionally pops up in discussions, but just doesn't have the prominence that he used to have. Yeah, he sounds a bit like, uh, who was Communion? Was that Whitley Strieber?
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he's sort of as played by Christopher Walken in the movie. But Greer though, yeah, he has this conspiracy stuff. There's a shadow government there, they're hiding the truth about aliens, but thinks that the answer to it is going to be some sort of a spiritual awakening as well in that community type sense of, of just the aliens are going to come and they're going to going to lift our consciousness and turn us all into star children or something.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah, he's one of those people who believes that the aliens are good and the government is evil for covering up first contact. But then, of course, 9-11 happened.
Impact of September 11 on Conspiratuality
00:39:50
Speaker
So as they talk about it, the events of 11 September 2001 were pivotal to the uptake of conspiratuality. Many people who had never held conspiracist beliefs rationalised the tragedy as an inside job designed to propagate war. Josh, which tragedies is there talking about from
00:40:09
Speaker
September 2001. This would be the tax on the World Trade Center. The what? No, I'm sure it was all over the place at the time. I imagine that the whole monolith on the moon thing is possibly... Actually, hold on. So, 2001 September... Oh, no, I know what happened. So, our friend Nick, his birthday is September 11th. Yes.
00:40:32
Speaker
And I was probably really hungover on September 12th NZ Standard Time, which would be the 11th of September in the US. So I think I might have missed this. Listen as well. Well, read on.
00:40:47
Speaker
Quite interesting, they say that in 2003, one-third of Germans under 30 believed that the US government was behind 9-11, and at least one opinion poll in 2006 suggested that more than a third of Americans believed the same. By 2007, Texas Congressman Ron Paul and film director Aaron Russo were publicizing the New World Order.
00:41:06
Speaker
In 2008, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita lobbied the debt on this matter, and in 2009, actor Charlie Sheen called upon Obama to reopen the 9-11 investigations. At least they didn't say, what was the phrase? That you always said, no, yes, a person with the gravitas of a Charlie Sheen. The gravitas, yes. No, they didn't go that far.
00:41:28
Speaker
I mean, the thing was, when someone wrote with the gravitas of a Charlie Sheen, that was well before the two and a half men debacle, but even before the two and a half men debacle, Charlie Sheen did not have gravitas. Martin Sheen possibly had gravitas. But Charlie Sheen, probably one of the least gravitas-y people I can possibly think of. Quite possibly.
00:41:58
Speaker
So, I mean, 9-11 is very definitely a conspiracy theory thing, and doesn't really have anything new PG about it. Yeah, I mean, I think what they're trying to do here is go look, post 2001, there are a lot more conspiracy theories out there. Now, actually, this is arguable, because as the polling seems to indicate, if we take, say, the work of Joe Sinski seriously,
00:42:23
Speaker
Then actually it doesn't look like there were more conspiracy theories post 9-11, maybe the kind of conspiracy theories that were being believed prominently changed, but it's not entirely clear there was a massive uptake of conspiracy theory belief at that time. But they seem to want to be linking the look
Post-2001 Expansion and Internet Growth
00:42:41
Speaker
After 2001, there are lots of these conspiracy theories out there, and also at the time of a lot of variant spiritual beliefs. Ipsophankto, there must be some relationship here to explain why these spiritual beliefs propagated, so we're going to go 9-11 as kind of the motivating event here.
00:43:01
Speaker
And I don't know why they're just not talking if they want to talk about a conspiracy mindset. Just talk about a conspiracy mindset and say some of these mindsets have spiritual characteristics as we saw with conspiracy mindsets in the past when they were attached to religious practices or religious beliefs.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess if they want to talk about conspiratorialism, which is conspiracy plus spiritualism, then if, as they say, there was an uptick in conspiracising, then that would naturally lead to an uptick in conspiratorialism. But yeah, I don't know. So at any rate, they go on to talk about what they identify as the second generation, which they see is coming from 2002 onwards. They say,
00:43:47
Speaker
We identify 2002 as the year second generation conspiratuality started. This was not just because the events of 9-11 and increase in political disillusionment were generating extra demand. By 2002, the web and access to it and its subcultures were sufficiently developed to accommodate conspiratuality's expansion. Website building had been simplified and the blogosphere, the network of blogs on the internet, was growing.
00:44:12
Speaker
Does the blogosphere exist anymore? I mean, it does. There are still lots and lots of blog sites out there. I just don't think many people read them. Were you used to have a blog? Yeah, I've had multiple blogs in my time. I had a blog before they were called blogs, back when they were just web journals or whatever.
00:44:35
Speaker
Anyway, we're so sorry, when they were called web, web, web jobs, web jobs, yep, that's exactly what they're called. And they see the web jobs. Yep. So they give examples of second generation conspiratorialists, they talk about john Perkins,
00:44:50
Speaker
who, quote, exposes the shadowy US elite corporatocracy for which he once worked to destabilize smaller countries economically. He suggests that corporate networks could be transformed to positive purposes, stressing that many shadow government employees are human with children and grandchildren, and despite the financial rewards, desperate for the excuses protesters offer to do the right thing.
00:45:12
Speaker
So, I mean, I guess that does fit their model of believing in these things, but also believing in a peaceful, hippie-ish way out of it. They also talk about Project Camelot, which they describe as a platform for shadow government whistleblowers. But what's the kind of Project Camelot?
00:45:30
Speaker
It's actually still going to this day. So if you want to know more about Project Camelot, the podcast Knowledge Fight covers it occasionally. The interesting thing about Project Camelot is the major source of information for Project Camelot, which is information about the
00:45:55
Speaker
interdimensional aliens who control the world comes from a convicted murderer, Mark Richards. So the main host doesn't often get to talk with her source because he's in prison. And these days also, she seems to have been pranked by someone who's a listener to knowledge fight who goes onto her show and talks about the Squatch.
00:46:23
Speaker
Is that the Sasquatch? It is, because Sasquatches are an alien species, a highly intelligent, peaceful alien species. And they have ambassadors on Earth, but these ambassadors are often tried to be killed by Medawells, and sometimes the Squatch has to go off planet. Have you, incidentally, are you aware of the new podcast series, Big Feats?
00:46:50
Speaker
No, I am not. It's a spin-off of the the Dog Zone 9000 from the 1900 hot dog comedy website, but it's basically it's going to be nine or twelve parts or something. And it's just the hosts of the podcast are watching every episode of the first season of. OK, that's cool now. It's a show on HBO Max about hillbillies chasing Sasquatch. Oh, OK.
00:47:19
Speaker
It's very silly. Anyway, not actually relevant to what we're talking about now, which is the next section of this paper, which is the key themes. So they talk about a bunch of common themes in spirituality.
Themes in Conspiratuality: Change and Nonviolence
00:47:34
Speaker
They include change or transformation,
00:47:37
Speaker
And that's both within yourself and within the world. And in many cases, it's the one leads to the other. You need to have to change yourself to awaken to the truth. And then having done that, you can then go out and change the world for the better. Apparently, you can spiritualists, they tend to go for nonviolent action.
00:47:58
Speaker
over a sort of violent protest and whatever. I'm not sure, I guess. I suppose David Icke isn't actually throwing Molotovs through vaccination centres yet. They talk about unification, again, the idea that we all need to come together
00:48:14
Speaker
either as part of this raising of consciousness or all of the coming together is what will cause that. They have themes of revelation. Again, the truth is going to be revealed to us as it was revealed to David Icke in South America that time when he came back and put on a tracksuit and went on television. I think you'll find that a shell suit. Well, similar. Similar.
00:48:39
Speaker
Again, they mention people who are into this sort of thing. Apparently, the guy from Muse, what's his name? Bellamy from Muse is into David Icke. I didn't know that. But they quote some of his lyrics, which are apparently ikean.
00:48:54
Speaker
well i'm i mean i'm not surprised i'm not surprised i mean once again these common themes these all seem to be things which also exist in the old religions so change of transformation most organized religions usually end up kind of arguing for a kind of
00:49:13
Speaker
pacifism to affect change, because often they end up being part of the establishment, they want to unify believers, they've got revelation as a key feature of how you come to knowledge about what the divine wants you to do. None of these things seem to be particularly new-agey.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It's things that they certainly think that the various conspiratorialists have in common, but I guess that doesn't mean they don't appear anywhere else. But yeah, it's all, I think we're a decent way through the paper now and things are still feeling a little ill-defined and doesn't get a lot clearer when you get into the next section, criticisms of conspiratuality.
00:49:56
Speaker
Which I suspect is a section in the paper that was put in as a reply to a reviewer because I don't think they actually deal with any criticisms. I think they use two examples a reviewer put forward and then they write about them as a this is a sop to reviewer B who's only going to accept the paper if we put in these two points.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's very short. And it doesn't really actually have any sort of size. Yeah, they talk about the fact that people including Barkun have this worry that the far rights, this sort of merging of disparate elements could result in the far rights conspiracy sort of infecting the left.
00:50:38
Speaker
as they all come together. And I mean, there has been that phenomenon observed in sort of the wellness influencer types, shifting over time to becoming kind of, kind of, fascisty. I'm not sure how it worked. It was sort of, you know, wellness and health kind of leads to concepts of purity, to ideological purity, to I don't know. So possibly there is a little bit of a, a little bit of a
00:51:06
Speaker
phenomenon there, but I don't know that it's a trend or anything. Then they do, they do suggest that the racism that they say is more prominent on the right would be rejected by new age types. They interestingly go on to quote David Icke basically speaking against anti-Semitism.
00:51:29
Speaker
sort of, a bit. The quote they get from Ike is, we need to drop the ludicrous childish labels of Jew and Gentile and Muslim and all this illusory crap and come together in the name of peace and justice for all. There's not a Jewish injustice or a Palestinian injustice, there is simply injustice, which sounds a little bit like saying I don't see race, but
00:51:51
Speaker
Yeah, which is often taken to be a very racist thing to say. And also, he will say this with a really large montage in the background projected on a screen, which has anti-Semitic tropes in it. So, I mean, he may speak the words, but he doesn't seem to behave in a way which indicates he believes those words.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah. So the next section is conspiratuality's appeal, where they want to say what what it is that causes people subscribe
Appeal of Conspiratuality to Believers
00:52:21
Speaker
to it. They say conspiratuality obviously appeals to clients who already believe in or suspect the existence of a shadow government and shift.
00:52:29
Speaker
But then they go on to say it could also appeal to what they call cultural creatives, which seems to be anyone a bit sort of lefty. I don't know. They say it's social movements like environmentalism and feminism and civil rights and peace. They also chuck in complementary and alternative medicine in there. So once again, casting quite a wide net with their definitions.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah and once again I mean we're looking at social movements which are trying to promote transformative change. So if you're an environmentalist you want to change the world to ensure that an environmental collapse isn't going to occur. If you're a feminist you want equality for all genders. If you're a civil rights activist you're arguing against systemic prejudice against particular parts of the population. If you're a peace activist you're arguing against the notion of war.
00:53:18
Speaker
don't think it's quite fair to put complementary and alternative medicine into that particular rubric there, but these are all movements looking for transformative change. But because they've been so vague as to what the transformative change is when it comes to New Age spirituality,
00:53:38
Speaker
It's not clear that these groups that are arguing for transformative change are arguing for it in the same way that a New Ager might be arguing for it. A New Ager will want transformative change through a kind of spiritual awakening. A feminist may be going, no, we just want policy changes. We want policy changes that put in place equality in such a way that it gets rid of the systemic bias towards women in our society.
00:54:07
Speaker
A spiritual change would be great, but what actually would be really, really good at this time would be legislative change. Actual tangible change. Without the stuff anymore. Nevertheless, they go on to talk about some of its appeal as in, again, using that term, the providers, providers of conspiratuality. They say providers have credentials and appear credible to many despite promoting beliefs that often seem bizarre to non-subscribers.
00:54:33
Speaker
They are trustworthy accomplices, having succeeded in acceptable, quote, unquote, real world careers. David Icke was a professional footballer, BBC sports commentator and Green Party politician, while Bill Ryan of Project Camelot was a management consultant and his counterpart, Kerry Cassidy, a filmmaker. Stephen Greer worked as the director of the A&E department of the North Carolina Hospital. Jacques Fresco, inventor of Zeitgeist, the movie and movement, is an architect. John Perkins was a government official.
00:55:01
Speaker
I'm not sure what the fact that they all had day jobs means, but I guess it means did. I guess the same thing. They're not obviously trying to see if they're acceptable real world careers. And I put real world in quotes there. Yeah, this seems like a very weird thing to say. Well, look.
00:55:16
Speaker
X has a weird belief, but look, they're perfectly normal in every other respect. Yeah. And then they say another appeal is that it's quite flexible. It doesn't require things of its believers in many cases. They're not made to go along with anything. And in fact, more than being told to think there's a lot of encouraging people to do their own research, which as we know, always works out really well and is completely fine.
00:55:42
Speaker
They move on to 9-11 again, saying, the events of 9-11 exposed many too can spirituality as rumors that it was an inside job undertaken to start a war on terror spread via the web and continue to spread. Some would have found providers such as Ike who received publicity for his predictions that the shadow government would undertake a false flag operation around 2001 to provoke a war with Islam. Did he do that? Is it like how he was supposedly going on about Jimmy Savile?
00:56:10
Speaker
I can't recall, actually. I mean, it might be one of those post facto things. Look, look, I told you about this at the time. But nevertheless, such is more appealing than conventional political commentators or the radical right. Surfers would have shopped around, I assume they'd be web surfers, not
00:56:30
Speaker
Not actual surfers, but actual surfers. Although, I mean, surfers should always be making sure they get the best deal for their money. Those boards are expensive and that wax is surprisingly expensive. Continuing those who encountered conspirility but had not previously held new age beliefs in a shift,
00:56:49
Speaker
might have focused instead on providers' political interpretations or transposed ideas of a shift into concerns about Earth changes or waking up to what was going on. They might also have been attracted at a time of crisis by the optimism intrinsic to core conviction too, that was concerning a mass shift in consciousness.
00:57:07
Speaker
And so towards the end of this, they're basically saying that conspiracy theorizing is becoming more commonplace, which again, debatable, is getting aired in the mainstream media, which I know, could you make an argument that at least conspiracy theories are popping up in mainstream media, less as an object of fun? I mean, I mean, they actually explicitly refer to Fox News in this case as, as supporting all sorts of
00:57:30
Speaker
stuff. Yeah and I mean and their writing in 2011 they're not they're not even aware where Fox News is going to go by 2023. There is an interesting discussion in media studies about the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the media versus arguably how prevalent they are in society and I think it is the case that media organizations are talking about conspiracy theories more
00:57:58
Speaker
in the same respect that whenever crime goes down, the media reports more on crimes that occur, because as crime becomes less common, crime has become more notable, and notable things are newsworthy, thus leading people to believe there's a crime wave when actually all the media is doing is reporting on notable events, which is why we didn't really talk about spousal abuse in the middle of the 20th century, because it was really, really common.
00:58:26
Speaker
Cheery, cheery thought. So they say, thus with interest in conspiracists, topics we've used in spirituality growing, the future looks bright for conspiratuality, which then leads them into the final section of this.
00:58:42
Speaker
leads them into their final section, which is just a discussion. They say the formation of conspiratoriality offers much of theoretical interest. We suggest some perspectives for further investigation. And then they do that. They basically bring up a few things that could be studied if you're looking into this sort of area.
00:59:02
Speaker
And that's kind of it. There isn't a conclusion of any sort, really. There's just a list of interesting things where we could take it from here. So again, I guess it isn't a philosophical paper. So I guess maybe we don't need to require that of them, but it just kind of goes and then stops.
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of just trails off. It does a little. So, I mean, I guess it's interesting. It feels like there is a phenomenon there, but maybe like you say, they're trying to pull too much stuff in and be too many things to too many people.
00:59:41
Speaker
And as a result, it just ends up becoming a bit too muddy to actually to be able to point to any one thing that they're actually talking about. So yeah, it feels like there's something there. Just still not at the end of reading that paper, 100% sure what it is.
00:59:57
Speaker
Yeah, as I say, they're trying to find an umbrella term for a set of phenomena which actually may not be that tightly related. And I think it would be better for them to admit the reason why, rather than going for present purposes, we don't need to define X.
01:00:16
Speaker
they should go, well, look, we can't define X because X is just an umbrella term for a set of disparate processes. We now want to have an umbrella term that refers to a whole bunch of things captured by those other umbrella terms. Of course, things are going to be flexible as to whether they fit or don't fit this particular taxonomy. But there is some interesting phenomena here we think we can pick out by doing this kind of process. So I think the fact that they
01:00:44
Speaker
avoid talking about definitions as if it's a virtue rather than admitting that look we can't really define this as a hard and fast thing is a bit of a detriment for then working out well how do we use the analysis in this paper so yeah i mean i guess an interesting one to have read but um i can see why i can see why you saved it for a bit later than some of the other ones yeah but yeah
01:01:08
Speaker
That is the end of this episode. We, of course, are going to go on to record a bonus episode for our beloved patrons, where we'll talk about a bit of current events. And if you want to know what those current events are, then tune into the bonus episode, for which, of course, you'll need to be a patron. And if you're not and want to become one, just go to Betrayal.com and look for the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. It's literally that easy.
01:01:34
Speaker
It is. It's so easy that even a child could do it. Your child is doing it right now. Your child has done it. You should actually go check as to why your child has your credit card. Is your child meant to be buying knives on the internet?
01:01:48
Speaker
I'd be disappointed if they weren't, quite frankly. Also, if you don't have a child, surprise, someone to trust you. Now you do. One for you on Amazon. Exactly. And who bought that child? Another child. Another child, yes. Children all the way down. I'm not quite sure what that means, but...
01:02:05
Speaker
I'm going to bail before we have to find out. So as the sun rises on a new era for the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, which is quite similar to the era just before the previous era. And the era just before the previous era as well.
01:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. So the connection hasn't died while we've been doing this, so hopefully things will continue in that vein. Let's end this now and then record the bonus one quickly and hope the connection stays as good for that. Indeed. So there's nothing left to say now, but goodbye. Anal beads! Spoilers. Spoilers.
01:02:51
Speaker
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. And remember, keep watching the skis.