So without knowing more, I can’t say much.

‘Proven’ is an interesting one. The standard and burden of proof is of great importance. Standardly in cases where a decision has to be made, I suppose one goes on a balance of probabilities: i.e whatever is more likely than not. As far as the burden of proof (i.e. what is the starting assumption), I’m not sure what you do.

Does the Warren comission’s JFK theory have default status? Does anything else have to be ‘proven’? What about something that is both far from proven and far from proven-false? Are there any useful rules here? How about teh House Committee on assassinations? They found, on (IIRC) a balance of probabilities basis, that there was a conspiracy, but, on a similar basis, that none of the candidate suspects were reponsible. So where does that leave us? Do we say that a generalised JFK conspiracy theory is ‘far from proven’?

It makes quite a big difference how you assess the burden and standard of proof – and that rather depends on what the consequences of the outcome are going to be. In a criminal prosecution, there is a burden of proof: it’s placed on the state which is trying to punish someone. And along with that goes (nominally at least) a high standard of proof – beyond reasonable doubt.

One factor (though a minor one among all the noisy bullshit) which skews public deliberation about possible conspiracies in contemporary and recent history is the fear of libel suits. Another is the rhetoric of the defenders of power, who uniformly manipulate burdens and standards of proof – so an official story is given the benefit of every doubt, a competitor of none. It is very easy to miss this unless one is paying evry close attention with this kind of consideration in mind. OK end of.

Same re the ‘conspiracist’ thing – though I’m not saying it’s a huge deal in any given case, nor advertent on your part, it is a problem I think, because it loads the issue with a personal dimension and tends to mean that 1 and 2 are easily assimilated to 3 (and as you say, there is a continuum along that dimension, so by 3 I probably mean the far extreme in that direction). In fact, I would object a bit to saying ‘paranoid’ at all. It’s inaccurate unless the theory is self-centred, and redundant given that the theory, to get into class 3 must surely actually, objectively and independently be categorised as wildly implausible or actually impossible. Basically, more heat than light.

Same with ‘compulsive types who believe in some elaborate version of history that is hidden to most’.

That’s a bit of a strawman invention of Popper (in his guise as amateur propagandist) taken up by Hofstadter later on, the ‘conspiracy theory of history’, and doesn’t apply, from what I can see, to most (I have no numbers of course) 9/11 inside job types, for example. Those who do talk in a way that is consistent with that conception are, I think, often (not always; all of this is a matter of the percentages – which I freely admit I can’t supply) not very attached to the idea and see it as a hobbyist diversion, somewhat analogous to those who read horoscopes or go to fortune tellers but if pressed will agree it’s basicaly bollocks (or more recently ‘their own truth’). They also tend to have in mind what I’ve called ‘agent-based theories’ that are pretty thin on detail.

In fact, in a way, it’s the opposite approach that Chomsky objects to – the focus on isolated individual events, rather than the tight fetters of capitalist history and its integral covert action etc.

And I still say C’s position is defective – simply because his headline position is (basically) that conspiracy theories in general are always wrong, while his argument consists largely of saying the CIA (no mention of FBI, or more secretive/ad hoc special forces, or any other actors) don’t act without presidential authority, which includes deniable nods and winks. There’s more detail and context above though your searching and wading through it would no doubt be beyond the call. I may do so later.

And the issue of getting authorisation is not the same as top-down planning. For example Operation Northwoods, it appears, was agreed by the joint chiefs and CIA before it was offered to Kennedy for sign-off – which disappointingly for them wasn’t forthcoming in the event. And what is more, Chomsky doesn’t even establish that the CIA are under the complete control of the White House. A specific example of his general approach which isn’t interested in intra-class machinations. He thinks, for example, that Nixon was brought down by big finance – is that with or without the assistance of CIA elements?

But anyway, getting explicit recognition of the scale that includes 1 to 3 was probably the main part of my (self-imposed) brief really. Not that it isn’t obvious (and I don’t say it wasn’t so to you all along), but from previous conversations with fairly clued-up people (I’m not claiming special ablities, just to have taken an interest in the general topic where others haven’t), it’s clear that the distinction is often overlooked, and certainly there is a big interest in – and apologists in the press expend a lot of effort on – assimilating instances of 1 to classes 2 or 3 – as seen in the rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war plot.

There are gradations here, of course, theories which fall midway between categories. My sense is that people can get, um, attached to theories which may start out as category 2 but should be placed in category 3. And at the other extreme, people become emotionally attached to the denials of the theories in category 1.

Eh? What was that about? I take it from the italicizing of my name that there’s something patronizing about first name use.

“Nice use of the ‘conspiracist’ label by the way.”

Maybe that’s what it was about. Touchy, touchy. I didn’t even enter into this to argue with you—I was irritated by ajay. I was defending Chomsky’s views from the claim he is having it both ways. As I understand him, he thinks Presidents order the CIA to conduct covert ops and they don’t go and do it on their own. His MLK suggestion is a departure for him, unless he thinks LBJ ordered it. (I also think it’s stupid.)

I’m touchy about the conspiracist label myself, when it is applied to things I believe, such as the conspiracy theory that holds the Bush Administration deliberately lied us into the Iraq War and a friend of mine once dismissed the allegation that the US tortured innocent people to death with the response that “Yeah, well, people write books saying Bush did 9/11”. I don’t want my quite reasonable beliefs about powerful people doing bad things tied in with theories that are ridiculous (9/11 Truther notions) or even those that are not crazy AFAIK but have much less evidence supporting them (this or that group killed JFK). It’s useful to have a term that distinguishes between reasonable conspiracy theories with lots of evidence for them and the ones that seem to attract compulsive types who believe in some elaborate version of history that is hidden to most. Unfortunately we don’t have a good word for this.

Substance McG @137: “The president is a secret Muslim” is popular now.

nugatory conspiracy theories
Indeed, though “The president is a secret Muslim” isn’t much of a conspiracy theory is it – unless he is supposed to have some fiendish Islamic plan going (or if the claim is that he’s a practising, ‘organised’ muslim, which claim would exhibit one of the supposed incidents of ‘conspiracy theories’, viz. positing an implausible secrecy).

A bit like the ‘Birther’ stuff – I mean, it’s a nasty rumour cooked up for political smear purposes and unsupported by any evidence, and that’s what wrong with it – not really that it has some supposed general features shared by all ‘conspiracy theories’ which make it inherently ridiculous or implausible. It isn’t implausible that a parent might falsify her infant son’s birthplace in order to secure him citizenship, nor that the son (possibly, one supposes, in this hypothetical situation, ignorant about the circumstances of his birth) might try and pursue some career, even one which absolutely requires US birth. Politicians may have skeletons in their cupboards like anyone else.

Being a secret (informal) muslim would be similar – it wouldn’t have been such a very huge issue had the GWOT not come along, and by then what would our imaginary muslim do? Throw in the towel? (More disclaiming, if required – I don’t suggest either thesis merits more than vanishingly small credence – enough to prevent !DIV/0# errors propagating through the notional Bayesian spreadsheet…)

agent-based theories
Maybe a distinguishable species of ‘CT’, which is based primarily on a person or organisation and which doesn’t really get round to specifying what actual nefarious actions are involved or planned. Also an element of ‘mood music’ as in Daniel’s earlier thread (the one predictably dominated by postmodernological disputes).

A small number of examples in the link @ 141 fall into the ‘agent-based’ or (not necessarily the same) ‘mood-music’ category – e.g. the usual underspecified Illumi-bloody-nati, Bohemian Owl, Trilateral comm, Bilderberg etc., and especially the ‘New World Order’ gubbins.

Having said that, there is perhaps something prima facie slightly suspect in itself about secret/secretive organisations – assuming one starts from a critical perspective. And worth remembering that, for example, Bilderberg’s secrecy was much greater to start with, and has only peeled away gradually, and largely through the activities of ‘conspiracy theorists’: first its existence, then its meetings, then to some extent its membership. But never, of course, exactly what is planned (it surely ain’t about golf), nor the power dynamics of such planning – it remains semi-clandestine and protected in part by general aversion to ‘conspiratorial’ talk.

mood music
But what might appear to be a ‘mood music’ (subjective) element is sometimes, I think, fairly tractable. The New World Order business, for example, is just the kind of thing that merits Chomsky’s asperity. Hugely vague umbrella term, fixating on vocab, no very specific claims about actual covert activity – certainly not backed with evidence – a big distraction, and quite irritating. It’s a pretty nugatory theory in terms of definite content. Less ‘mood music’; more like a substantial failure – failure to come up with anything substantial.

Taking Bilderberg again, the perceived mood music element may be partly a matter of how plausible it is that there’s something (fairly obviously) dodgy going on, like bankers crowning party leaders – or even election winners – or handing out orders, possibly illegal or murderous ones. Assessing such plausbility is a ‘subjective’ judgement only in the sense that there aren’t very clear criteria, nor much evidence, for adjudicating disagreements. A judgement about how convivial and (superficially) egalitarian or merely discursive the proceedings are doesn’t amount to a constitutive, ineliminably subjective element in the phenomena themselves. It’s an objective matter what is inside the velvet glove.

Pace bianca @144, a more subjective kind of mood music – the kind I think Daniel was referring to – would come in where a political, pragmatic or ideological view determines whether certain plots and plans are regarded as sinister or undesirable, i.e. whether the ‘wrongdoing’ element partly constitutive of ‘conspiracy’ (as canvassed above) is satisfied.

That is as subjective as the relevant conception of a ‘wrongdoing’-like concept, which in turn may not be terribly subjective after all if you take a positivist (e.g. legalistic) view of the relevant concept, or indeed if you are somewhat objectivistic about values, maybe taking a Hume/Wiggins type of position. In any case, even if a contestable concept is involved, the metaphysics of it are less important than the rhetoric, and there’s actually in many cases (e.g. murder) a fair bit of agreement, or at least lip-service, which is nearly as good.

Bonus links

BL1: Hitchens, C., writing in next month’s Vanity Fair, gives Gore Vidal the full treatment. Vidal, with his playful postmodern(?) approach, does of course ask for it a bit – though I’m not aware he deserves this, however heavily (but – as CH well knows – vainly) qualified: a very, very minor tendency to bring up the Jewish question in contexts where it didn’t quite belong…

BL2: The undisputed heavyweight champion of the transfigurative conspiratorial genre, Uncle Bill (video link), debunks, with unimpeachable logic, the ‘all-powerful conspiracy’ trope: “Don’t let them see us! Don’t tell them what we are doing!” Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates?

That is “the facts were tailored to the policy”.

Subsequently because of its convenience it is likely to rear its ugly head for quite some time.

What ultimately is truly remarkable though, is how the vast majority, and this includes significant numbers of so-called liberals, were convinced that these free market policies were in their best interests when they were exactly the opposite. That took some substantial double-think to accomplish.

In fact much of the Republican agenda, is entirely contrary to the benefits of those who most vehemently subscribe to their views. It is frankly amazing the number of poor and down and out who attend this “church” of conservatism, and yet are tortured daily by the fruits of their support.

Is there a British equivalent to the US college fraternity
As you say – the informal old school tie stuff (seeing a comeback with the Cameroons), and I suppose really extreme elite stuff like the Bullingdon (likewise). But I’d resist assimilating anything like that to ‘conspiracy’ – that’s kind of one of the points I’m groping for at such (tedious I fear) length. As is the point that odd practices do not anything other than odd practices make.

*Is there a British equivalent to the US college fraternity? In some ways, perhaps public school fagging would be an equivalent.

Still, theories about stuff like Bohemian Grove or ‘occult’ societies are particularly prone to being dismissed on unfair grounds (even though there are normally plenty of fair ones adequate to that purpose) because the occultiness that features in oblique context, inside the theory, tends to be attributed in a blurry way to those tabling the theory – i.e. if I think that a bunch of people are doing nasty stuff because of some crazy beliefs, a casual observer may see that as me putting forward a theory based on subscribing to those crazy beliefs, or more likely just think ‘crazy beliefs – I’m off’.

A less unreasonable approach is to reject the idea that all these serious people would subscribe to crazy views. An entirely reasonable one (to go off on a bit of a Bohemian Grove-related tangent) is to point out that even if power-crazed sybarites might indulge in grotesque activities, that doesn’t tell us anything about anything else they might be doing. Of course such activities or beliefs might form a part of a scenario involving, say, blackmail or the conditional expectation of it.

and re #141, I’m not endorsing it in its entirety btw- some of it – mainly towards the end – is a bit breathless and unfocused.

I started to re-read Rorty’s “Is there a problem with fictional reference?” a little while ago, and I realized though I thought I’d known what the issue was the first time I read it, I’m no longer sure.