Conspiracism and CountersubversionPrevious | TOC | Print | Next
When conspiracism becomes a mass phenomenon,
persons seeking to protect the nation from the alleged conspiracy of
subversives gnawing away at the entrails of the society form counter
movements-thus the term countersubversion.
David Brion Davis noted that movements
to counter the "threat of conspiratorial subversion acquired new
meaning in a nation born in revolution and based on the sovereignty
of the people," and that in the US," crusades against subversion
have never been the monopoly of a single social class or ideology,
but have been readily appropriated by highly diverse groups."~14
Frank Donner perceived an institutionalized
culture of countersubversion in the United States "marked by a
distinct pathology: conspiracy theory, moralism, nativism, and suppressiveness."~15
This
countersubversion hysteria is linked to government attempts to disrupt
and crush dissident social movements in the United States.~16
Conspiracists
in the government and private sector periodically create a "countersubversive" apparatus
as a response to dissent. The FBI's counterintelligence program of
illegally spying on and disrupting dissidents from the 1950s to the
1970s, dubbed COINTELPRO, is an example of an operational conspiracy
ironically based on a conspiracist worldview that suspected widespread
subversion by leftists.
Davis points out that:
==="genuine conspiracies have seldom been
as dangerous or as powerful as have movements of countersubversion.
The exposer of conspiracies necessarily adopts a victimized, self-righteous
tone which masks his own meaner interests as well as his share of
responsibility for a given conflict. Accusations of conspiracy conceal
or justify one's own provocative acts and thus contribute to individual
or national self-deception. Still worse, they lead to overreactions,
particularly to degrees of suppressive violence which normally would
not be tolerated."~17
The most influential conspiracist theory
in the US during the twentieth century was the fear of the Red Menace.
Donner argued that the unstated yet actual primary goal of surveillance
and political intelligence gathering by state agencies and their countersubversive
allies is not amassing evidence of illegal activity for criminal prosecutions,
but punishing critics of the status quo or the state in order to undermine
movements for social change.
A major tool used to justify the anti-democratic
activities of the intelligence establishment is propaganda designed
to create fear of a menace by an alien outsider. The timeless myth
of the enemy "other" assuages ethnocentrist hungers with
servings of fresh scapegoats. As Donner noted: "In a period of
social and economic change during which traditional institutions are
under the greatest strain, the need for the myth is especially strong
as a means of transferring blame, an outlet for the despair [people]
face when normal channels of protest and change are closed."~18
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