Re: Powerlessness Corrupts

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/10/06, Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> there's point that Hofstadter misses. Those who break with an
> organization such as the old Masons, the Catholic Church (especially
> the pre-Vatical II version), or the CP are encouraged to think in
> totally black and white terms. Those organizations themselves tended
> to think in black/white terms. If you break with an organization that
> helped to define your identity as a human being, you have to quickly
> develop a new identity, often one that's the opposite of the old one.
> (It's like kids who rebel from their parents by embracing some
> "opposite.") And suddenly all of their old friends are gone and they
> have new friends who want to hear all about how evil their old
> organization was.

It's not so much who renegades are as how others respond to renegades
-- as "the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have
been doubted by a skeptical world," as Hofstadter puts it -- that
interests me, as far as its implications for understanding the
popularity of conspiracy theory are concerned.

A lot of American politics on the Left, even outside those who are
given to conspiracy theory, is organized around secrecy and exposure.
To a certain extent, that is an unavoidable dynamic, as the national
security state is indeed dedicated to classifying a lot of information
while collecting a lot of it about people  at home and abroad.  And
yet, as long as politics revolves around the drama of secrecy and
exposure, it remains immature.  E.g., it's not Bush's deception about
his plan for the invasion of Iraq but the fact that American politics
(except on the tiny margins, beyond the pale) is based on the premise
that America has the right and duty to lead and save the world that is
the problem, but that premise lives on, no matter what people feel
about the drama of belated exposures.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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