Conspiracy Theories and Common Sense

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

A tip ‘o the hate to my Twitter bud, Kulak‏ @Kulak67440352.

Robert Locke is one of the most brilliant thinkers alive. I used to read him religiously during the early 2000s. A late, very good friend (late, not because he’s dead, but because he ain’t my friend no more) once told me who Locke was, but I’ve long forgot, and wouldn't say, if I did remember, though I might have tried to contact him.

(I know the real names of so many paleoconservative/Dissident Right writers, that I no longer try to keep them straight. When I run into them at conferences and social occasions, I have to remind myself to just say, “Hi,” rather than “Hi, so-and-so,” because the identities on their nameplates are always changing, and I don’t want to out anyone.)

According to my Twitter buddy, Kulak, Robert Locke retired because he saw that America was finished, and there was nothing he could do about it.


Conspiracy Theory and the National Question, Part I
July 24, 2004
By Robert Locke


Like most sane people, I have generally regarded conspiracy theory as an intellectual rat-hole that distracts from the real issues. But I have recently been forced to the conclusion that it is an encrustation of fantasy around real truths that cannot safely be ignored. I’m not about to tell you Martians shot Kennedy, so hear me out.

To reach the bedrock of truth under conspiracy theory, one must dig away layers of nonsense and clarify some confused questions of political philosophy. But eventually, truths emerge without which it is impossible to understand the recent history of this country and the ongoing efforts to betray it.


Separating Fact from Fantasy

The first step in distilling sense out of conspiracy theory is to throw out all the wholly ridiculous stuff, like extraterrestrials.

The second is to clarify the error of political philosophy that makes conspiracy theory seem a priori ridiculous: the idea that the conspiracy itself is the motive power behind the political events associated with it.

This is the classic image that is quite rightly the sticking point for most people: a luxuriously-appointed room, in New York, Washington or Geneva, filled with impeccably dressed men who hold discussions and then give orders that are somehow, mysteriously, obeyed around the world.

This was the thing I could never find believable. If the Illuminati, Jews, or Trilateral Commission secretly control the world, how do they force people to do their bidding? How many divisions has the Council on Foreign Relations?

In reality, political conspiracies have no force on their own, but must be understood as vehicles for powerful people’s pre-existing political objectives. The real question is not,

How does conspiracy X acquire power over the world?

But rather,

How is conspiracy X a useful vehicle for already-powerful people who want more power over the world?


Wouldn’t You Conspire in Their Shoes?

The fundamental question that must be asked of anyone who would dismiss the very possibility of political conspiracies is this:

Do you deny that cynical powerful people who want certain things get together with other cynical powerful people who want the same things and coordinate their actions?

Once one frames it this way, it’s obvious that they do. And why shouldn’t they, if they have any expectation of thereby getting something they want?

But why do the desires of cynical, powerful people produce conspiracies, rather than, say, political parties? The next question is,

Do you deny that there are people in politics who want things they know they will be less likely to get if the public knows about it?

The answer to this question is obvious, too. But the next one is the real clincher:

Isn’t the ultimate dream of cynical, powerful people to rule the world?

Well, for people on a sufficiently high level, of course it is. What greater prize is there, particularly since it confers all the lesser prizes like money, prestige, and control of the culture?

Christianity understands this: ruling the world was one of the three temptations the devil offered Jesus, so the desire to rule the world is a Satanic temptation, even when it would be Jesus doing it. (Luke 4:5-8) Judaism does, too: the Tower of Babel story condemns one-worldism. (Genesis 11:1-9) Islam, on the other hand, explicitly favors world conquest.

The fundamental reality that underlies all the conspiracies you read about, however wrong on specific facts or distorted by eccentric obsessions of the authors, is this:

There exist cynical, powerful people who want to rule the world, they know they would be resisted if this were publicly known, so they set out to do it by covert means.

Conspiracy theory is the attempt to discover those means.

It is by its nature rife with errors, weirdness, and a lot of outright nonsense. But at bottom, it is not only not false, it is absolutely essential for serious conservatives, or indeed for anyone who doesn’t want to live under the tyranny that a world government would inevitably be. So we must hold our noses and get to work analyzing it.


Why World Government?

Why do the aforementioned conspirators desire a world government? Because that is what one needs to rule the world, obviously.

Their arrogance – and they are the most arrogant people alive – causes them to assume that they, along with their friends and other "people like us" that they’ve met over the years at conferences in Switzerland and similar venues, will run such a government.

Naturally, they would prefer they personally run it. But to some extent, world government is another "beautiful idea" and covert religion, like Marxism, that so entrances men’s minds that they will work for its realization at some distant point in the future by other people, just for the sheer satisfaction of feeling themselves a part of a transcendent good that brings meaning to their lives.


A Conspiracy or a Class?

Some who sympathize with the basic thesis here argue, however, that this should all be described not as a transnational conspiracy to rule the world but in terms of a transnational class with this objective. On the left, there exists a class that John Fonte has termed "transnational progressives." On the (nominal) right, there exists a transnational corporate elite that may disagree with the socialistic agenda of the former, but can agree on its hostility to the nation-state.

The key difference between the two is whether they’d rather sell out American sovereignty to the UN or the WTO, but given that they obviously intend to merge these two organizations at some point, this doesn’t mean much in the long run.

This analysis is true as far as it goes, but it is insufficient as an account of politics because it is not enough for a class to merely exist and want things for political events to happen. It must explicitly organize to get these things. It must cultivate establish institutions, disseminate ideas through media, raise and distribute money, cultivate personal relationships, and back candidates for office. If this involves complete or partial concealment of the means or the end, then one may at least refer to it as "covert action."

The term "conspiracy" is somewhat loaded, but if one can refer to the Bolshevik revolutionaries as conspirators, then it is appropriate at least part of the time. Because there simply is deception going on, for the simple reason that world government is an unpopular idea that usually must be concealed to be advanced. There are secret understandings, hidden agendas, private relationships of cooperation behind a façade of disagreement, undisclosed transfers of money, and deliberately-propagated public myths about important political questions.

The term "conspiracy" is perhaps too brittle, too redolent of outright Mafia activity, to be the perfect one for the things it describes, but it is the best available. Call it a "partly-covert international political network" if you prefer.

Or think of politics as a cube with three axes: one between ideologically-intentional goals and unintended consequences, one between organized activity and unorganized events, and one between publicly-admitted actions and concealed ones. Politics obviously covers every conceivable mixture and degree of these qualities, but constitutes a conspiracy only when it is ideologically-intentional, organized, and covert. This is one corner of a very big cube.

But it is real. Make no mistake about that.

Not everything these people do to further their objective is conspiratorial, as parts don’t have to, or can’t, be kept secret. It’s just that what the public doesn’t know is, by definition, the part that needs to be talked about, because it constitutes new information and results in a different picture of contemporary politics. I call it the Covert Coalition to Rule the World or CCRW.


A Conspiracy or an Ideology?

Some argue that the essence of the thing is not a conspiracy but the worldwide playing-out of an ideology. Obviously, ideology is of incalculable importance in politics generally, but this explanation begs the question of why the ideology in question is adopted by the key political players.

If one ignores the CCRW as a factor explaining why the political classes of the West and elsewhere adopted certain ideas, there is some explanation for why, but not enough. So much of what they have done at best gratuitous, and at worst inexplicably contrary to their interests, if one does not assume a conspiracy to create world government. It becomes banally obvious if one does.

Remember that the CCWR does not always use the same ideology, as the ideology that will cause people to do what it wants varies from society to society and changes over time. Obviously, the ideology must lead in the eventual direction of submission to world government, so it cannot adopt just anything, but the CCWR can be very tactically flexible in the short and medium term. If authoritarian nationalism helps China globalize the world economy, the CCRW will do everything it can to reward China for practicing it. If Islamism helps Moslem guest workers destroy the Christian identity of the West, it is useful. If libertarianism makes Americans more willing to sell their country off for profit, good. If socialism makes Europeans more accepting of the bridle of the state, all the better. The CCRW is very cunning and highly unprincipled about everything except about its own core principle.

As Barry Goldwater put it, speaking of one particular CCRW instrument,

“the Council on Foreign Relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to Communism. They have no ideological anchors. In their pursuit of a new world order they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, monarchy, oligarchy – it's all the same to them." (With No Apologies p.278)

In analyzing this question, remember that the CCRW is not possessed of some magic button it can push to make a society adopt a certain ideology. It is not gifted with occult means of causation and everything it does must operate through ordinary human institutions. But it has numerous collaborators in the media, the publishing industry, the universities, the teachers' unions and elsewhere which transmit the ideology it wants transmitted to the public. A perfect example of this would be the Rockefeller Foundation's use of Teachers College at Columbia University to propagate the progressivism of John Dewey to the teaching establishment.

Some have argued that this conspiracy exists but is not a conspiracy because it is actually quite open. But this openness is highly selective, and tends to consist in parts of the conspiracy not subject to public wrath, or not expecting their words to be widely publicized, admitting what they want, not in the president of the United States announcing on national TV that his agenda is the liquidation of America. Furthermore, this objection tends to come from people who say "X happens, but it’s no secret" and then deny that they have just admitted that X does indeed happen. Logic does not permit one to use this argument to pooh-pooh the notion of a conspiracy and then claim nothing dangerous is going on.


The Dangers of Excessive Skepticism

In response to blank skepticism about the very idea that political conspiracies take place, one word: Lenin.

One cannot wish the conspiracies out of history. One can only make a coldly precise evaluation of which happened and which didn’t. Boris Yeltsin admitted after the end of the Cold War that the USSR had been conspiring against the US and that Joe McCarthy had been substantially right about Soviet penetration of the State Department. What more proof do you want?

It can be risky to demand an excessive standard of evidence. One can make infinite mischief by demanding airtight mathematical proofs of historical facts, as Holocaust-deniers have discovered to their amusement.

One should always demand the highest standard of evidence that is feasible given the available data, but not forget that the questions in dispute in the history of political conspiracy are not different in essence from other historical controversies that must deal in incomplete evidence, like "why did the Roman Empire fall?" or "why did the Industrial Revolution occur in Britain?"

It is intellectually respectable to say that one knows some historical fact with 75% certainty, if one is honest that one has only this amount of certainty and willing to reverse one's position should countervailing evidence surface.

Set the threshold of proof too low, and one admits nonsense; set it too high, and one rejects truths, resulting in different nonsense. Skepticism is not the guaranteed safe option, as the omelet-faced skeptics of the McCarthy era have discovered.

One must reject arguments like "this is the kind of thing redneck gun nuts in Idaho believe, therefore it is false." Not only does this snobbery lack any actual logic, but redneck gun nuts figured out that world government was a real threat ten years before I did, so my Ivy-educated Manhattan-dwelling hat’s off to them. They just need to cull the sense from the nonsense in what they believe: I don't think the black helicopter thing is real.

The biggest warning sign of genuinely nutty conspiracy theory is that it depends upon the author knowing facts which he could not possibly know. I admit that there is not the space in this article to exhibit a dispositive pile of evidence for my thesis, but I trust the reader will admit that my case does not depend upon magical or impossible knowledge of things that go on in other people's minds or behind locked doors. My argument here fundamentally turns upon known basics of human nature and the fact that the hypothesis that there is a CCRW explains the known historical data better than the hypothesis that there is not.

The best evidence of a conspiracy always comes from defectors from it. We have the following from Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a member of the CCRW tool the Council on Foreign Relations for 16 years who quit in disgust:

"The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common – they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States." (The Review of the News, April 9, 1980, p.37)

In piecing together the historical record of the CCRW, one should not look to assemble a perfectly seamless web. One should recognize that the conspiracy moved by fits and starts, that it contained dead ends, and that not all pro-globalist political activity has been contained within it. And always remember that self-interest and ideology are its driving forces, not secret handshakes….