Monday, February 22, 2010





I have an urgent message for you.

The entire Universe is controlled by a cabal of immortal Jews who live on the moon. Or the C.I.A. Or some magical lizards whose spacecraft took a nosedive into the antediluvian slime and whose merest puppets we have been since time immemorial. You don’t see this do you? You don’t even know for example that the United Nations Headquarters is on the site of an old slaughterhouse because it’s actually a Masonic temple which must be built on ground consecrated by blood. You don’t realise that the American military industrial complex has the capacity to control the weather and has had for years, so you probably think that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was simply a consequence of incompetence, greed, corruption and entirely predictable extreme weather patterns. Fool! It served THEIR interests. Everything does.

Maybe I’m being paranoid now myself, but conspiracy theory seems to be cropping everywhere, shadowing The Shock Doctrine sitting fairly centrally in Adam Curtis’s most recent piece, increasingly infecting the minds of work colleagues, friends and family. A few months ago a guy in my local Gym handed me a leaflet explaining how the Swine-flu vaccine was actually poison and I should check out www.fluscam.com, itself an attempt to scam me out of taking a vaccine that might potentially have saved my life. Paranoia has certainly increased as a condition over the past twenty years, (or so THEY say, maybe it’s actually decreased) and perhaps it’s entirely MY paranoia but it seems that paranoiacs and conspiracy theorist are everywhere, the new people-to-avoid-at-parties. It used to be Christians. You’re having a perfectly normal conversation then suddenly it’s “you know I too had a Jesus–shaped hole in my life until I woke up to his abundant Love.” Except now it’s, “I used to have a contingency-shaped lacuna in my view of History until I woke up to the abundant wealth of the Rothschilds.” Conspiracy theory serves the same ends, it’s a religion of a kind, positing an all-powerful malign force whose tenebrous fingers plunge deep into every conceivable pie. No doubt these variously Gnostic and
Manichean vision are intriguing from some academic p.o.v but they’re also downright frustrating to encounter one-on-one. As William Burroughs wisely suggested: “Never show sympathy to the mentally ill. It’s a bottomless pit.”

Now, I have an O-level in Sociology and I distinctly remember that we looked at how the media distorts things, learned that official history ought to be viewed sceptically and identified the tightly-knit historically extended elites that have made up the higher echelons of governments and armies over the centuries. What we weren’t encouraged to do was to extrapolate this into a worldview in which the Illuminati have already mapped out every possible move and in which both agency and contingency were radically undermined. The more fool us no doubt, we failed to cut through the Matrix and truly see.

Conspiracy theory is in fact the shadow to consciousness-raising politics and its secular evangelism, it’s all about knowing. You are one of the elect, a seer who has grasped reality, the others are blind and must be brought into the light. All well and good, I’ve done some arguing and prosletyzing myself but for Conspiracy Theorists (Hereafter ConT: oh and let’s not try that “is that a theory. I just call them facts” move) the question is, what now? Ok I accept that the Shadow World controls everything? What do we do about it? We persuade everyone else. Ok hypothetically everyone believes that 9/11 was an inside job. So what’s next? Answer: Nothing. We simply know, we simply take satisfaction in the fact that we are not deceived. ConT is Reflexive Impotence as historiography, deeply disempowering. After all, everything serves their interest. The war in Iraq seems to be going badly you say. NO! It’s going exactly as they planned it. The financial crash is a disaster for American Capitalism you say. NO! Someone, somewhere has benefitted, so it’s clearly just one more manifestation of their will.



But THEY seem to be a weird combination of omnipotence and naivety. How come 4, 000 Jews didn’t go to work in the Twin Towers on 9/11? ( I recently had this question repeated to me by a Saudi student. I first heard it, from a Saudi, the day after the attack.) Hang on, you think they can orchestrate this brilliant deception, yet they are foolish enough to ring round all the Jews and tell them to stay at home? They can control the weather but they can’t manufacture a few phoney W.M.Ds in Iraq? No matter, the seemingly inconsistent and contingent will be smoothed over by the certainty that finally, on some deeper level of interconnectedness, it all makes sense.

I know, it’s a response to the collapse of Marxism or something, but in the same way it’s pointless trying to talk someone out of their belief, you’ll be banging your head against a brick wall with the ConTs: they need a first and final Cause, a predetermined universe that will justify their pleasurable combination of self-righteousness and apathy, the ego unperturbed, hunched in front of the monitor, being One Who Knows. Conspiracy theory offers a kind of lightly digestible theoretical dog’s dinner, a montage of attractions ranging across the political spectrums, the contradictions don’t matter, or at least don’t resolve themselves in some interesting new theoretical leap, anti-finance-capital but pro-property-ownership, anti-big-government yet anti-market at the same time, whatever can be shoehorned in to shore up the continually collapsing denial of contingency is fine. Global warming is, of course, total bollocks, at the same time the Oil Industry funds vast webs of disinformation. The Jews own everything, then again so do the Arabs. Probably they’re secretly working together to suck the life from proud Aryan children and all the seeming hostility is just a pantomime to keep us wrong footed. Israel and the Arab world are secretly in cahoots! They must be, no-one thinks so! How come you never once hear anyone suggest as much? Grounds for suspicion there.

The fundamental question for the ConT is: how do you know that this isn’t exactly what THEY want you to believe, maybe it’s there to siphon off potential discontent into the never ending, forking paths of conspiracy theory and mystical conjecture, how do you know it’s not all disinformation planted in your head by the C.I.A and that official history is exactly the truth they want to distract you from? After all, look how successful they were in getting everyone to believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that the truth was discovered by three kids with a laptop in a shack in Montana and yet still, despite the obvious truth of it all, no-one did anything!!!. Why do THEY want you to believe this? Maybe this more than anything serves their interests!

You’re a conspiracy theorist. A-ha! They got you there, didn’t they?




57 comments:

Qlipoth said...

Thank goodness! At last a post about the sheer awfulness of those awful Conspiracy Theorists. Aren't they just awful, all of them? Awful! And they're all the same, aren't they? Without exception. Always on about "the Jews" and The Illuminati and UFOs and that. All of 'em.

Simply awful.

Reasonable Men everywhere will applaud you wholeheartedly for having had the guts to speak your mind about Conspiracy Theorists. What can we hope for next? An incisive essay about the curse of Political Correctness? Something straight-to-the-point about the threat of Islamofascism? Perhaps you'll share your cutting-edge thoughts about the nuisance of Uppity N*ggers? I mean, words are neutral, right? You can just pick 'em up and use them as you find them. Right?

Wrong. Words are weapons, and you are handling them with less care and attention than a three-year-old with a hand-grenade.

If and when you do finally tire of constructing straw men and then beating them up noisily while congratulating yourself immoderately on your (entirely imaginary) fighting skills, you might consider actually thinking about the cant terms you deploy with such youthful, not to say childish, insouciance:

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.


http://tinyurl.com/yb43ge4

QED, Mr. Hecht. QED, yet again.

Anonymous said...

you know me, i seethe with anti-intellectual resentment.. that's my problem with Cont in a nutshell....it's just too clever...

Qlipoth said...

"you know me, i seethe with anti-intellectual resentment"

Well, I hope you're not expecting anyone to disagree with you about that, or to share in your fond delusion that you're being successfully ironical. Your post was indeed a prime example of resentful antithought. That's what happens when you deploy hackneyed thoughtstoppers - "tireless workhorses of establishment discourse" - as substitutes for actual thought. That's what happens when you beat up jerrybuilt straw men in public and then expect applause for your heroic feat. It will not succeed in giving laddishness a good name.

"that's my problem with Cont in a nutshell....it's just too clever..."

More primary-school "irony". But how could "Cont" [sic] possibly be clever, when you make the term itself synonymous with stupidity or insanity? Your argument is not merely childish but entirely tautologous.

In its braying disdain for a carefully undefined opponent it is also laddishly and insecurely vain. But of course there's a lot of that about. Alexander Cockburn is now approaching seventy and still mistaking his own territorial pissings for rational arguments:

Suffering Cockburn: 9/11 and the Left's Collective Unconsciousness

http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006/09/suffering-cockburn-911-and-lefts.html

Anonymous said...

Well, there's conspiracy theories and there's conspiracy theories. The Riechstag fire and the faked Gulf of Tonkin attack were concocted and exploited for nefarious long-term ends - and they're now historical facts, aren't they?

Not quite the same as royal lizards, the Davinci code or the Elders of Zion...

Anonymous said...

It is generally accepted by historians today that the Reichstag fire was a one-man job with no one else having any advance knowledge of it.

Seb said...

I wonder if and when Qlipoth will finally tire of constructing straw men, by suggesting people who use "conspiracy theory" as a dismissive truncheon are religiously-intolerant racist crackers.

If anything, the people most wholly devoted to conspiracy theories these days are lower-middle and working class white people (especially men) who feel their demographic's "rightful" place atop the heap of humanity has been threatened. The Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck, Palinite Pentecostals, Oath Keepers, Joe Stack - they see grubby, poorly armed Muslims defeating better-equipped Christian soldiers in Afghanistan & Iraq; they see barely-ex-commie Asian economies threatening to shatter America's commercial hegemony; they see a black man in the highest office in America, and suddenly their world doesn't make sense. Surely this can't be the natural order! Obviously there's been some kind of mistake or subterfuge!

And again, there's conspiracy theories and there's conspiracy theories. The ones that eventually find enough factual basis to give 'em legs become history, while the rest remain conspiracy theories because they're only theories.

The CIA funded abstract expressionism & pop art to counter Marxist Futurism & cubism? Yeah, we've got the paper trail to prove it.

9/11 was orchestrated by the US gov't? Sure, and Cheney is actually a radical leftist sent to destroy the GOP from within via sheer ineptitude.

Qlipoth said...

"I wonder if and when Qlipoth will finally tire of constructing straw men, by suggesting people who use "conspiracy theory" as a dismissive truncheon are religiously-intolerant racist crackers."

Of course I did nothing of the sort. I wonder if and when Seb will finally learn to read.

"If anything, the people most wholly devoted to conspiracy theories these days are lower-middle and working class white people (especially men)"

So Seb rules, ad hoc and ex cathedra, in a judgment positively dripping with nervous class contempt. "Lower-middle and working class"! By the Lord Harry! Is Seb by any chance Alexander Cockburn? Or is he in fact the Duchess of York? In any case, the Seb-defined proletariat is quite simply awful. (Nearly as bad as the lower-middle class, with its laughable pretentions and its ineradicable vulgarity.) Keeps its coal in the bath, grumbles incessantly about its lot in life, blames furriners for everything, and yet - as Lord Cockburn complains - has a truly horrifying "cynicism re government". (Its taste in music is no doubt also embarrassingly unsophisticated.)

I wonder if and when Seb will finally tire of constructing straw men by suggesting that those labeled "conspiracy theorists" are generally "lower-middle and working class" [sic] as well as culpably male. Perhaps when he learns to read. In any case, and just for example: Lynn Margulis is neither working class nor a man. Nor are the so-called "Jersey Girls"*. Cynthia McKinney is neither working class nor male nor even white. Gore Vidal is male, admittedly, but he certainly has nothing in common with Glenn Beck. And exactly where do Peter Dale Scott and Nafeez Ahmed fit in here? Not to mention "the Arab street", where (as the Guardian complains) "conspiracy theory" is "rife". (I wonder why?)

What's painfully obvious is that many of the people labeled "conspiracy theorists" (because they not only read and think but also venture to speak) cannot be forced into the Archie Bunker designed and jerrybuilt for them by Seb and the Impostume. And it's striking, too, how such sophisticated and no doubt entirely classless Interlads as Carl and Seb feel the need to conflate such people as Margulis, McKinney, Scott and Ahmed (presuming, no doubt rashly, that they've even heard of them) with the awful ball-scratching telly-addicted rednecked proles of their imagination.

At any rate, it's all very telling. What becomes more and more apparent is that it's a class thing, this persistent conjuring of a clueless fungible mass whose sole raison d'être is to be pointed at and despised by (soi-disant) Leftists distinguished mainly by their precarity and marginality. Conflation is everything: as long as you can call them all "conspiracy theorists", you never once have to address anything any one of them ever actually says. This gives you more time to listen to records.

Of course, with a Left like that, nobody needs a Right. QED, yet again. But cui bono? Cui bono, exactly? (That, of course, is a rhetorical question.)

*http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481#

Seb said...

Okay, I'll leave aside the class-baiting, 'cuz that bullshit smells too rank to call it anything else. Let's instead get to the crux of Carl's post: conspiracy theories (sorry, speculative constructions regarding the socio-economic-military complex) offer the same kind of phantasmic belief structure that religion does. Mix equal parts cherry-picked data, faith, and confirmation bias, and shazam! There's your worldview.

So in those terms, Qlipoth, you're the evangelical and we're the athiests - which means the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to us to prove a negative. Give us good reason to believe, uh, whatever it is you're pushing; tell us how this revelation will be using beyond the gall that, wow, those fuckers really have us bent over a chair; and we'll very happily listen!

All we're asking for is reason not to put you alongside Bob Lazar, William Gray, and Lyndon LaRouche. Trust me, I'm no political structuralist - just me us halfway, man!

Qlipoth said...

"Okay, I'll leave aside the class-baiting, 'cuz that bullshit smells too rank to call it anything else."

"Class-baiting"? What point do you imagine you're making there? It was, very obviously, you and Carl who started the "class-baiting". It was your bullshit and it does indeed smell rank. So clean it up, Seb. It's certainly not my job.

"Mix equal parts cherry-picked data, faith, and confirmation bias, and shazam! There's your worldview."

No, there's yours, and you cherry-picked all your "data" off the telly. What's more - as you freely admit, you have not the slightest idea what my "worldview" (sic) is: "Give us good reason to believe, uh, whatever it is you're pushing". "Uh." "Whatever." Sic.

Well, my worldview includes the ever-stronger conviction that an increasingly precarious class of resentfully declassé Interlads enjoys pouring blanket scorn on the Proles. The Interlads enjoy such Yahooism because it makes their lives so much comfier, as they age. It allows them to sidestep any responsibility to acquire information from any source more reliable than CNN or the BBC. It means they need never develop an argument that consists in anything more than typos, exclamation marks, dilapidated straw men, grotesque conflations of diametrical opposites, and transparent attempts at guilt by association. It enables them to practice condescension despite not actually being in an elevated position. Last not least, it leaves them even more time to absorb and discuss really important matters, such as the latest release by Beyoncé or Nick Cave, and whatever Hollywood movie or TV show is currently being deemed "subversive". (It's terribly time-consuming keeping up with The Wire and Sopranos, I know, I know. To say nothing of all those records, plus V for Vendetta, plus Avatar. Or whatever.)

In this way and others, the Interlads establish their [irony] Left [/irony] credentials while still finding time to express their continuing disgust with the lower classes, who are so naive (or is it "cynical"?) as to distrust their governments.

QED, Seb. The evidence is everywhere. You and Carl have provided even more of that evidence on this very page.

HTH.

PS You can discover more about my “worldview“ by actually following the two links I provided. (That's why I provided them.) I'd suggest the film for you, because a) it's easier than reading, and b) the sanity of the women (and men) interviewed in that film makes a refreshing break from the rank bullshit of the Interlads.

Qlipoth said...

Here's the link to the film again:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481#

Seb said...

How can you honestly expect anyone to take your politics or journalistic forays seriously if they're even half as riddled with assumptions, platitudes, demagoguery, and smugness as what you've presented here?

Matt Taibbi really does have your number.

So as not to turn Carl's blog into some foaming cesspool of character assassination, I'll clam up for now, but remember: despite what Roger Ailes' underlings would tell you, getting the last word in doesn't mean you win or that you're right.

Qlipoth said...

"I'll clam up for now."

Surprise, surprise. No response to the film, no indication that you even watched it, not a hint of a response to any of the links, not even the very feeblest attempt at the rudiments of a rational argument.

In short: par for the course. The defactualisation of analysis proceeds apace. Cowardice and disingenuousness are where it's at:

"Matt Taibbi really does have your number."

No he doesn't, but it surprises me not a bit that you would name-check Taibbi's brainless and ignorant rant as a substitute for actually attempting to think by yourself. Because, Seb, you are nothing if not a hipster - and the sad thing is, you think that's the same thing as being a thinker. (Are you still young enough to get away with that?)

All you and Carl have posted here is a torrent of smug, content-free and wholly ignorant class-based contempt, followed by a ridiculously huffy silence. Your posts are an utter waste of time, for they have nothing whatsoever to do with anything but you and your ego. In all that, you are nothing if not typical, and utterly, utterly predictable. The uncritical use of the cant term "conspiracy theory" is the mark of a powerworshipping antithinker.

Don't forget to keep posting your opinions about pop records, though. They, like, really, really matter. It's the way forward for the Left, don't you know. What the world really needs is more opinions about Burial, Beyoncé and the Junior Boys. In times like these, "cynicism re government" (aka "conspiracy theory") is not just frightfully infra dig, but positively dangerous. If you tried it, somebody might actually laugh at you (or Carl) in the club, and that's a risk neither of you can possibly be expected to take, even while capitalism eats the planet.

"Of course they meet in rooms! Where the hell else do you think they meeet? On a carousel?" - Michael Parenti.

Qlipoth said...

"riddled with assumptions, platitudes, demagoguery, and smugness"

What a near-perfect description of the blogpost I was responding to! Or perhaps Carl's blogpost was meant as a polite and carefully-reasoned invitation to debate? In that case, the wonder is that Carl and his sole supporter are so averse to actually defending their arguments (if that is the word, and it certainly isn't) once somebody actually bothers to call their bluff.

Rossikovsky said...

The worst thing about Conspiracy Theorists, as you suggest Mr. Neville, is that they ruin any genuine investigation into political and economic anomalies.

I "contribute" to various economics and politics forums, and just when we're making some productive analysis as to why the Federal Reserve are hiding the true extent of their purchases of bank debt, or why the Chinese are extending further infrastructure aid to Iran, some cunt called "Oracle" or "Merlin" will arrive and promptly ruin the thread by hosing it with horseshit about significant numbers, Masonic symbolism and Bohemian Grove.

These people aid the very forces they claim to oppose.

Qlipoth said...

QED, yet again. It's laughable. You Lads are nothing if not predictable.

jeremy said...

hiya, padraig

Rossikovsky said...

Here's an interesting conspiracy - why has David Icke left the details out of his near-fatal car crash out of his biography?

In the mid-80's he spent several months in a coma with severe head injuries after this crash, and it was after this event that he started to enter his turquoise tracksuit/reptile phase.

And yet, I can find no reference to this on his site, or on-line at all. In interviews he talks about his change from a cheery sports presenter to a challenging thinker as though it happened in a moment of revelation, whereas it seems obvious to me that the injuries he sustained led to a severe change of personality.

Can anyone find any references to this? I remember it vividly as a teenager, as when he returned to television after his recovery (to present the Embassy World Snooker Championship IIRC) he visibly looked a different person.

Qlipoth said...

Rossikovsky, you Lads just keep on shooting yourselves in the feet. It is truly astonishing what passes for thought here.

Forget, for just one moment, the mishaps and foibles of David Shayler (talk about cherrypicking...) and your other favourite entertainers & wacky C-list celebrities, and consider this:

"Maybe I’m being paranoid now myself, but conspiracy theory seems to be cropping everywhere, shadowing The Shock Doctrine sitting fairly centrally in Adam Curtis’s most recent piece, increasingly infecting the minds of work colleagues, friends and family."

Naomi Klein, like Chomsky, has indeed frequently been called a "conspiracy theorist" for pointing out - and carefully documenting - the most ballsachingly obvious truths about the way contemporary capitalism operates. In the ongoing War against Thinking, the "conspiracy theorist" cosh is in fact a favourite weapon of the Right, not least in its "liberal" wing in the Guardian and on the BBC. Why? Because it's one of the most effective thoughtstoppers around. As Hecht said, it is "worse than useless as an explanatory category", which only makes it all the more useful as an all-purpose frightener. You don't have to be even remotely clever to use it; on the contrary. Hacks on the telly use it all the time, and it's always accompanied by that obligatory smirk. (See Gavin Esler, or almost anyone else on the telly.)

So it's no surprise that Carl, too, doesn't hesitate to use it. Nor does he hesitate to include Klein among the "conspiracy theorists" - those massed ranks of the "mentally ill" [sic] who, he tells us, now include his "work colleagues, friends and family".

Only Carl, Carl suggests, is sane, and Carl's sanity is demonstrated, according to Carl, by his stout resistance to the "infection" [sic]. Carl, in short, is sound. A sound chap, a sound Lad, our Carl, with a sound taste in music and movies that proves he too can be trusted. He is demonstrating his membership of the club, or at least his fitness to submit the application form. No loony he.

That blogpost marks the point where lifestyle Leftism (or rather pseudoleftism-as-approved-popular-taste) passes over into frankly reactionary and obscurantist politics. In its blanket snobbery and class contempt it is deeply nasty, which of course doesn't prevent it from also being ridiculous. It's the triumph of smug know-nothingism and craven conformism masquerading as Plain Common Sense. The ambient music is Dean Martin. Welcome back to the 1950s.

Qlipoth said...

David Aaronovich applies his handy thoughtstopper's cosh, while Carl, Seb and Rossikovsky (The Interlads) supply the background music - male voices, close harmony:

----------------

Salon Interviewer:

"You deride Naomi Klein’s No War in the book. Do you think Klein is a conspiracy theorist?"

David Aaronovich (of the Guardian):

"Her last book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was essentially a gigantic conspiracy theory book — claiming that chaos is more or less created in order to encourage capitalism."

http://tinyurl.com/ylyk6j5

Sic.

Rossikovsky said...

Yeah, but Qlipoth, what about Icke's car crash?

He was actually a fairly junior BBC sports correspondent in the '80's, as in those days seniority tended to go with age (i.e. David's Vine and Coleman). If he was known at all before the Wogan interview, it was as "that sports presenter who had the car crash".

And yet now it seems to have been wiped from history - it isn't even in Icke's Wikipedia entry. Why isn't this significant event in Icke's life more well known? It must surely reflect on his subsequent behaviour.

Rossikovsky said...

Oh, and by the way Qlipoth, if you're going to pontificate about "thinking" I suggest you go and read some proper thinking, such as Spengler's "Decline Of The West" or Toynbee's "A Study of History", if you really want to understand the currents that are shaping the modern world.

Qlipoth said...

I have no idea, Rossikovsky, and very little interest. Shayler's escapades, including his recent transvestism, merely provide the Eslers, Aaronoviches, Blairs and Impostumes of this world with a handy excuse for sniggering once again at "the conspiracy theorists" (cos they're all the same, right?), among whom they happily include Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Parenti, Gore Vidal, Lynn Margulis and too many others to list (not least among them being the unjustly obscure women and men in that film, which I wish somebody would watch).

Any mention of Shayler here is a triviality and a distraction. Conflation is the name of the game - Carl's game, and Aaronovich's - and I'm not playing. That game is a terrible waste of time, it's gone on far too long already, it only serves one agenda, and it's also simply too childish. The Lads are not Alright.

Qlipoth said...

"Oh, and by the way Qlipoth, if you're going to pontificate about "thinking" I suggest you go and read some proper thinking, such as Spengler's "Decline Of The West" or Toynbee's "A Study of History", if you really want to understand the currents that are shaping the modern world."

Rossikovsky, your poor feet! They must be positively riddled with bullet-wounds by now.

And Spengler! Man sieht, wes Geistes Kind du bist. I did read Spengler and some Toynbee long ago, by the way, and if you imagine either one of those Great Men would be impressed by your fatuous antithought here, then I'd suggest you email them and ask. Maybe they'll say something about decadence. This astonishingly telling performance by you and the other Lads certainly does lend support to suspicions that "the West" (sic) is in serious decline.

While you're at it, Rossukovsky: Don't attempt condescension while balancing on a pile of Cole's Notes; it doesn't really make you look taller. Besides, you'll just hurt your poor feet again, and people are likely to laugh.

Qlipoth said...

For "Shayler", read "Icke". But I'm not interested in playing with any of your clowns.

chimp said...

Qlipoth :-

Are you a shapeshifter?
Can you see through girls clothes?

Rossikovsky said...

I'm not letting you wriggle off the hook like that Qlipoth. I notice you're doing everything to avoid revealing how Icke has managed to cover up the fact that his conspiracy-theorising was subsequent to serious head injuries. Paragraphs full of bluster are no defence.

Also, you obviously haven't read Spengler, as if you did you would be considerably less exercised about current events, and rather see the inevitable cultural patterns that give rise to them.

(You'd be a bit less histrionic, in other words.)

Rossikovsky said...

Oh yeah, and if you're going to make quotations in German, at least get them right.

Qlipoth said...

Roossikosky:

1. "if you're going to make quotations in German, at least get them right."

I did. Google it, and then show me your "correct" version of the German. It should be worth at least a tired laugh, like all of your posts so far.

2. "you obviously haven't read Spengler, as if you did you would be considerably less exercised about current events, and rather see the inevitable cultural patterns that give rise to them."

Man sieht, wes Geistes Kind du bist. God forbid anyone should be "exercised about current events"! It's all "inevitable" anyway, y'see. (I wasn't joking when I said the politics on display here were repulsively reactionary and obscurantist. The Interlads are not merely ridiculous.)

3. Your obsession with the clownish David Icke is telling, and in no way unexpected. Don't expect me to share that obsession or to join in your infantile games.

Rossokovsky said...

1. It only works for me as "man sieht wessen Geistes Kind du bist" but perhaps you can expand on an aspect of German I have not previously been exposed to.

2. Well you're the one who claimed to have read Spengler, and when I point out (as any fule kno) that his (and Toynbee's) basic historical philosophy is cyclicism you can't suddenly turn around and call it reactionary (as though the idea struck you for the first time)

3. My initial post about Icke's covering-up of his head injury was addressed to no-one in particular (I asked if "anyone" knew anything about it) and yet you were the only respondant to jump on it and address me directly. You have subsequently affected a disinterest in Icke, which is not remotely convincing, and appear to be fully prepared to bluster around the subject rather than offer a convincing explanation as to why the conspiracy-smeller pursuivant is happy to cover up his own past.

Anonymous said...

Qlipoth, you're a gem.

So if I like John Carpenter's They Live and think that through the use of metaphor it fairly depicts our society, does that make me a ConT (charming, I'm sure your girlfriend is impressed)?

I actually prefer Quantum Conspiracy Theory, which you could if you like abbreviate to QunT (yes, you're welcome). Being a QunT is where you could have both waves and particles: the former being a well worked out general social theory, Marxism say, and the latter being, the particular events that prove that flesh out the theory. I think it's sometimes called scholarship.

Hold on what's wrong with Adam Curtis, again? WTF?

I thought his last fine was fine. He really gets the murderous fever of the US ruling class. See also Philip K Dick, Barry Malzberg, Jimmy Ballard, Luis Buñuel etc etc. And if you don't think these people are describing something real through the use of metaphor colour me pink and call me "Oracle", or "Merlin".

Rossikovsky said...

Yeah, but JG Ballard, PK Dick, Bunuel etc. aren't necessarily depicting a ruling class pathology - they're depicting a general cultural pathology that the actors in their pieces identify themselves with.

Putting the Icke-ish "They Live" in the same context is misleading

What Ballard, Dick etc. wanted to show is that all of us have a fundamental taste for oblivion that capitalism allows us to fulfil. This has nothing to do with "conspiracy". Or at least if there is a conspiracy in their work, it is one that we are all consciously aware of.

Anonymous said...

What Ballard, Dick etc. wanted to show is that all of us have a fundamental taste for oblivion that capitalism allows us to fulfil.

No, I think that was particularly Ballard's theme which he found and approved in the rather reprehensible John Gray of Straw Dogs and The Spectator magazine fame.

And no, They Live isn't perfect either in positing an "alien" conspiracy but I see it as a metaphor for colonization: the whole world to them is just another Third World country to exploit. The aliens could just as well be white anglo Ivy League/Oxbridge trusties, or even just a ruling class. Anyway it isn't about who the aliens are - otherwise they would have made it more explicit - but rather that the rest of us have been lulled into a trance... They live while we sleep (work and die).

What I was talking about was they they, like Curtis - and you can add to this list, now that think of it, David Peace (mutatis mutandis), Michael Moore, Alan Moore, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Will Self, Nicholson Baker etc - understand and depict the murderous fever through which our ruling class, capitalist ideology is refracted.

Why can't people catalogue the particular instances of that in the real world? Yes, often people get it wrong and add their own distorted
prejudices, which can be tiresome sometimes.

And yeah, Carl(?)/Impostume is right in that if we spend all our time doing just that (i.e. train-spotting) it gets us nowhere, esp. without some kind of theoretical way to analyze these events and to work towards, as difficult as it may be, a better world.

Anonymous said...

The boss' murderous fever

Qlipoth said...

1. It only works for me as "man sieht wessen Geistes Kind du bist" but perhaps you can expand on an aspect of German I have not previously been exposed to.

You're missing a comma after "sieht". In any case: the form I used is archaic and has survived into contemporary usage only in that one particular locution. It derives from a quote from a certain old and famous translation of an even older and extremely well-known book you have very probably heard of. Look it up sometime, or else don't, as you see fit. If you do opt to go the route of knowledge rather than just switching on the telly, then there are things called search engines nowadays that can assist you in your tireless pursuit of wisdom.

But of course that's not what this thread is about, any more than it's about Icke, Spengler, Toynbee, J.G. Ballard, H.G. Wells, P.G. Tips, Lady GaGa, Harry Potter, or whatever books, CDs, comics or DVDs you happen to have currently out on loan from your local public library. It's about a blogpost by the Impostume on what he chooses to call "conspiracy theorists"[sic], that titterworthy fungible mass he concocted for your pleasure and his own.

2. Well you're the one who claimed to have read Spengler, and when I point out (as any fule kno) that his (and Toynbee's) basic historical philosophy is cyclicism you can't suddenly turn around and call it reactionary (as though the idea struck you for the first time)

Historical Note: I didn't call "it" reactionary. I said the Interlads' politics were repulsively reactionary and obscurantist, including yours. QED, richly, throughout this deeply informative and sociologically fascinating thread.

So, Rossikoksky, having tried unsuccessfully to divert this discussion into a study of the Mr. David Icke's real or merely aprocyphal headwounds, you're now hoping to divert it into an examination of two of your favourite Great Men of the West, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald bleeding Spengler.

I know your little game, matey. No dice. Please address the actual topic of this thread (i.e., the blogpost that provoked it) and kindly stop wasting everybody's time.

- contd.

Qlipoth said...

3. My initial post about Icke's covering-up of his head injury was addressed to no-one in particular (I asked if "anyone" knew anything about it) and yet you were the only respondant to jump on it and address me directly.

Yes, because you were attempting to divert this thread into a chat about something not just profoundly trivial and entirely irrelevant but perhaps even wholly imaginary, and which only you find even remotely interesting. In fact, you appear to be positively obsessed with it. Cui bono?

You have subsequently affected a disinterest in Icke,

What on earth are you rabbiting on about? I have never had any interest in David bloody Icke. Nor have I ever affected any interest in him, ever. On the contrary. Nor did I even mention the guy, UNTIL YOU DID.

which is not remotely convincing,

Rossikovsky, I do beg your pardon, but what the fuck are you talking about? Really, what do you imagine that line of yours is supposed to mean? Anything at all?

and appear to be fully prepared to bluster around the subject

There's something wrong with this microphone. Testing, testING, CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? GOOD: I never decided that David fucking Icke was "the subject" [sic!], NOR IS HE. It was YOU who pulled him out of your sleeve (or some other tube) because you want to bolster your fragile ego by having a good little snigger at a cherrypicked loony to whom you can feel superior even without balancing on that tottering stack of Cole's Notes, or on the Collected Works of Arnold Toynbee, or even on your complete if dusty set of the Enyclopaedia Brittanica.

You Lads are so transparent. And it's high time you tidied up your rooms.

rather than offer a convincing explanation as to why the conspiracy-smeller pursuivant is happy to cover up his own past.

What the...? Look, seriously, Rossikovsky, are you actually brain-damaged yourself, or what? What past are you accusing me of wanting to "cover up" [sic]? Chapter and verse, please. Quotes, links, footnotes and references. Perhaps you can find them in one of your tubes.

Jesus wept, and my eyes too are beginning to wa

Rossikovsky said...

Anon - fair enough.

Qlipoth - really it's difficult to debate with someone who affects to speak languages they can't actually speak, to have read books they haven't actually read, and responds to questions not addressed to them in a defensive manner and then retrospectively affects disinterest.

Also, you tend to ramble a bit, which tends to hide the small items of value that you may be contributing.

Qlipoth said...

"Qlipoth - really it's difficult to debate with someone who affects to speak languages they can't actually speak"

Rossikovsky, du hast den Arsch offen. Dass du ein armseliger Angeber und Lügner bist, steht außer Frage. Führe dich selbst ruhig weiterhin vor, wenn du denn meinst, es unbedingt tun zu müssen, aber bitte versuch' es nicht auf meine Kosten. Ich hab' schon Sardinen gegessen, die mehr Verstand und mehr Rückgrat hatten als du, und die waren alle schon tot und filetiert. Ein Windbeutel bist du, die reinste Zeitvergeudung.

"to have read books they haven't actually read"

Woher willst du das wissen, du Möchtegern? Und wie? Tatsache ist: 1. Du weiß es eben nicht. 2. Du hast auch nicht den geringsten Grund, es auch nur zu glauben. 3. Wäre deine Behauptung auch wahr (und es ist in Wahrheit selbstverständlich unwahr), dann täte es eh nichts zur Sache, rein gar nichts. Und sowieso: Spengler und Toynbee, fürwahr! Hast du überhaupt eine Ahnung, wie lächerlich du wirkst?

"and responds to questions not addressed to them in a defensive manner and then retrospectively affects disinterest."

Siehe da! Wer hätte es gedacht? Noch mehr strunzdumme und völlig durchsichtige Lügen. Der Laddismus als ununterbrochene und unfreiwillige Selbstentlarvung.

"Also, you tend to ramble a bit, which tends to hide the small items of value that you may be contributing."

Rossukovsky, are you a Surrealist? Just stop talking shit at me, stop telling lies about me, stop filling the thread with your irrelevant library and your icky obsessions, and then I won't actually be forced to "ramble".

Deal? Bitte. Das wäre echt supernett von dir, Meister.

Back on-topic, if humanly possible. Did anyone actually watch the film I linked to here two days ago? What did you think of them thar "conspiracy theorists" [sic]? A reasoned response, anyone?

Qlipoth said...

Link, for the third time:

*http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481#

I'd like to know two things:

1. Whether any of those people fit the self-serving and laddishly insulting stereotype presenting in the Impostume's blogpost;

2. Whether those people appear both more rational and more honest than any of the sniggering Interlads who deride them as loonies;

3. Whether any of the things said and shown in the film deserve, at the very least, very serious consideration.

The film requires 84 minutes of your valuable time, but that time will not be wasted. Thank you in advance for any honest and rational responses.

Qlipoth said...

Christ, typos. Three things, not two. And for "presenting", read "presented".

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Qlipoth, you blew this thread up so much you attracted the spambots.

chump said...

Qlipoth - you (by your own repeated admission) don't think much of this blog or those who often inhabit it's comments section. You sneer at Carl's perceived "laddishness" and his discussion/love of music and film.
Why do you read it then? Did you just happen upon this post having never seen the blog before? Due to your broad and perverted knowledge of the blog i suspect you are a frequent flyer here..
Are you therefore a masochist? Why would you spend time reading something that you patently dislike and which seems to anger you greatly?
Is it to aid the fostering of a "now do you see you fools?" mentality, which your aggressive and wounded aloofness point to? Were you bullied as a child?
The nature and style of all your comments here really do no service to your "ideas" being taken seriously, and only succeed in perfectly illustrating Carl's character study.
QED as you might say.

I watched the film you link to by the way, and found it very interesting. I admired the steady, rational approach of the group of women to simply try to get their government to account for certain actions / decisions / failures. Considering their personals losses, they conducted themselves with great dignity and with patience - something you may wish to reflect on.

As a literary footnote here, the comments on this post just make me want to read Robert Anton Wilson!

Qlipoth said...

"Qlipoth - you (by your own repeated admission) don't think much of this blog or those who often inhabit it's comments section. You sneer at Carl's perceived "laddishness" and his discussion/love of music and film."

If I "sneer", then I sneer only in reponse to the incessant and deeply obnoxious sneering of Carl and the Interlads. As I say, if someone is going to attempt condescension, then it's advisable for them not to do so from a position of complete ignorance. Bluffs need to be called, and these Lads are all bluff.

"Why would you spend time reading something that you patently dislike and which seems to anger you greatly?"

Why would I not? See, this is it, chump, this is what it always comes down to: your dismally typical and predictable response exemplifies precisely the kind of feeble hipsterish aestheticism that now does service as a political stance. Your immediate response is to suggest I switch channels or go buy a different CD. If something is deeply dislikable and makes you very angry, then (according to you) the only sensible response is to ignore it completely and maybe go play your favourite records instead. Should Marx have taken your august advice? Should Martin Luther King? Should the Jersey Girls? Che Guevara, Bernadette Devlin, Gerrard Winstanley? Gore Vidal, Michael Parenti? What's their excuse for their peculiar "masochism" [sic]? Surely they should just have switched channels or gone shopping instead? But no doubt they too were "bullied at school" (sic). Perhaps psychoanalysis could have helped them to learn to chill.

"I watched the film you link to by the way, and found it very interesting. I admired the steady, rational approach of the group of women to simply try to get their government to account for certain actions / decisions / failures."

Yes, the Jersey Girls (and Paul Thompson and Bob McElvaine, etc.) are much more rational and honest and in every way more admirable than the sniggering Interlads who happily insult them and lump them in with David Icke in order to flatter their own fragile egos. Glad you agree. And they're admirable not least because they are so unapologetically angry and resistant to bullying.

"Considering their personals losses, they conducted themselves with great dignity and with patience - something you may wish to reflect on."

What you call their patience is merely their persistence. And you can believe me when I say that they are at least as angry as I am. They are up against a stone wall erected by their lying, conspiring, murdering, warmongering, protofascist rulers. I was merely up against a crassly bullying and childishly "provocative" blogpost by some Lad who fondly imagines he's better than them, and then I was up against the sniggering Interlads, whose foolish lies and whose Thinkers' Library pretentions don't bother you nearly as much as my objections to them - something you may wish to reflect on.

"Were you bullied as a child?"

No, chump, but it's nice of you to ask, although your amateurish attempts at long-distance psychoanalysis reveal much more about you than about me. Nor did I ever bully anyone.

How about you, chump? Personally I've always detested bullies, especially when they're ignorant bluffers, as they nearly always are. That's precisely why I objected to Carl's bullying and ignorant blogpost, and that's why I called his bluff (and Seb's and Rossikovsky's). I think bullying should be opposed rather than just ignored. You disagree, for reasons I won't attempt to psychoanalyse. But I do know what kind of politics it makes for. QED, chump. (Yes, yet again.)

Qlipoth said...

"As a literary footnote here, the comments on this post just make me want to read Robert Anton Wilson!"

Precisely. That's the only response you can imagine: a good entertaining read about the comfortingly impenetrable wackiness of the world. And that's just one of the many things that distinguishes you from the Jersey Girls and Paul Thompson, whom you "admire" [sic] mainly for their entertainment value. But you'll be damned if it's ever going to cost you anything.

What's on the telly, Lads?

chump said...

Qlipoth -

I love the way you make massive leaps in your responses. (sounds like something else... conT perhaps?)

When i suggest Anton Wilson, you extrapolate that i therefore must have no other stance on the issues in the film other than to take refuge in entertainment. (It's deeply presumptuous and insulting to suggest that i view people's misery and anger as such - but no surprise 'cos you're the only valiant kind who can really feel those folks' pain while we all laugh yeah?)

It is possible to have more than one way of looking at things you know. If anything, that's what i enjoy most about Wilson - his multifaceted approach to examining very serious issues- "reality is at minimum 5-fold" etc. But i guess his early satire on Conspiracy Theorists mark him as a proto-lad and therefore easily dismissed yeah?

"I think bullying should be opposed rather than just ignored. You disagree, for reasons I won't attempt to psychoanalyse"
I was bullied at school actually (for being English in Scotland)which was pretty hard to ignore, so again i must take issue with your hasty and convenient assumptions.

Now when it comes to cod-psychoanalysis, your statement that the Jersey Girls are "at least as angry as i am" is a beauty....

Right, off to nurse the lager hangover and catch the rest of the cup final.

Qlipoth said...

"Right, off to nurse the lager hangover"

Ah yes, that would go some little way towards explaining the quality of your arguments.

The Lads are clearly very far from Alright, but Alka Seltzer won't be nearly enough to cure what ails them.

chump said...

Oh god you're too easy to bait! Like no way dude!

Really, even my piss poor gag gets you frothing (and more tellingly ignoring and diverting)

ay ay ay .... are you sure you're not the comic dealer from the Simpsons? Can you really not see through girl's clothes?

ratfarts said...

Qlipoth....hmmm...

Ah.. just looked this guy's blog and it all makes sense.

Blogging on Sopranos / The Wire in Feb 2010.. little after the fact but ok i'll indulge you a little...

Deleting comments by anyone but himself and his line-towing mates, whilst attacking other bloggers in bizarre fashion and not allowing them the right of reply. Sounds like a 9/11 commission or something!





..

Qlipoth said...

"my piss poor gag"

Correct, chump. Like the Impostume's "they're too clever" it was another sadly failed attempt at "irony". (And apparently I'm "frothing" if I dismiss it in two lines.) But if you're not in fact badly hungover, then maybe you can explain your responses so far.

"even my piss poor gag gets you frothing (and more tellingly ignoring and diverting)"

Bluff. That ruse won't work, chump. As anyone can see, I ignored nothing of any importance, and I diverted precisely nothing.

Next.

"When i suggest Anton Wilson, you extrapolate that i therefore must have no other stance on the issues in the film other than to take refuge in entertainment"

I extrapolated nothing, chump. In your own considered response to that film, you yourself articulated precisely no other stance on the issues it raises. Therefore, I'm perfectly entitled to presume you have none. (Maybe you have; but if so, don't expect me to discern it telepathically.)

And you did indeed regard that film as entertainment, as you yourself both admitted and demonstrated. You described it as "interesting" - the emptiest, laziest and most carefully bet-hedging compliment in existence; that's why its a Guardian Arts favourite).

And what was the one thing you chose to pick out for particular praise? That those women "conducted themselves with great dignity and with patience". Right. They're primarily "interesting" to you as models of long-suffering and ladylike stoicism (which you primly and hypocritically suggest I should emulate, here in this very pissoir). Their evident anger merits no mention.

So, Chump: Finally we come to your sole, one-line, response to the actual content of that documentary film. It's well worth waiting for:

"I admired the steady, rational approach of the group of women to simply try to get their government to account for certain actions / decisions / failures."

You see how you chose to frame it? How very misleadingly? "Actions" - entirely neutral. "Decisions" - entirely neutral. "Failures" - the poor US ruling class is incompetent at worst, according to you. (And "certain"! It seems those "actions" etc. are entirely unnamable.)

Really, chump, it's worthy of the Guardian, the sheer pusillanimity and automatic disingenuousness of it all. Not one word from you about the actual innumerable and blatant lies exposed in that film. Not a peep from you about the fact that those lies implicate many still-very-powerful people in mass murder, and in very much more than that since September 2001.

The kicker comes at the end, though, complete with a jolly exclamation mark:

"As a literary footnote here, the comments on this post just make me want to read Robert Anton Wilson!"

Why, chump? Why your immediate yearning for a "zany" "imaginative" decades-old fictional entertainment about disoriented wackos, weird hallucinations, the mysterious number 23, hibernating Nazis, talking cetaceans and the Evil Illuminati?

It is transparently obvious why: so that you could go straight back to sniggering at "conspiracy theorists" [sic]. Having just "admired" the unspecifiably "interesting" Jersey Widows -- who are among Carl's "conspiracy theorists", let's remember --, you were now badly missing your comfort zone. Like Carl, you prefer comic-book loonies to real-life sane people. They disturb you less, and not for no reason.

That's Laddism.

PS But thank you, chump, sincerely, for at least having bothered to watch the film. No other Lad has risked commenting on it. All they have to offer is smelly little ratfarts. The Lads are not Alright.

Qlipoth said...

Blair borrows Carl's cosh:

Blair: Iraq oil claim is 'conspiracy theory'

Guardian, Wednesday January 15, 2003

Tony Blair today derided as "conspiracy theories" accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs. [...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jan/15/foreignpolicy.uk

chump said...

I've decided to use Qlipoth's trick of removing troublesome comments from his own blog by removing myself from this one henceforth.

Qlipoth said...

"I've decided to use Qlipoth's trick of removing troublesome comments from his own blog by removing myself from this one henceforth."

Quelle surprise. This is very impressive.

Off you go then, chump, just like Seb. You might yet catch up with him. If The Lads are united, they will never be detected.

PS I have never removed a comment from any blog.

ratfarts said...

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/8539/78257063.png

Qlipoth said...

Ratfarts Lad, I didn't delete it. Qlipoth is a group blog and I wasn't the author of that post. I do know her, though, and if she deleted a comment, then it can only have been because, yet again, some lovable InterLad was posting her home address, or details of her personal life, or calling her not just a ConT (ho ho) but an actual cunt.

Such things can happen when you rile the Lads up, and not too seldom either. They tend to have very fragile egos.

Qlipoth said...

Just like Tony Blair, George W. Bush enjoys wielding Carl's trusty thoughtstopping cosh:

"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K5M0xtxQVQ

van booby said...

Qlipoth in the first comment on this post:-

"Words are weapons, and you are handling them with less care and attention than a three-year-old with a hand-grenade. "

Well you sure followed your own advice there buddy!

Carl - keep it up. I don't read Impostume for cutting edge political comment, but rather for the acerbic wit which wonderfully exposes people like Qlipoth. Nice going!

ps. can i borrow your Ocean Colour Scene album?

Qlipoth said...

van booby: sycophancy is no substitute for an actual argument.

Seb, you were by far the best of the bunch. Even if that's damning with faint praise, I'm still sorry I came down so hard on you. Being an optimist, I didn't realise how very much worse it could get.("van booby" and "ratfarts"... know thyselves. God, you Lads are a laugh a minute.)

Carl: many thanks for your essay on Withnail & I, sincerely. It opened my eyes to certain aspects of that brilliant film I'd never properly noticed before, even though I'd seen it many times. (I went back and watched it again.) But no thanks for this truly awful concoction, for reasons already given. Not everything can be approached from the standpoint of a fan or a non-fan. The corporate media's represention of a real mass murder (and universal casus belli) is something very different from a movie or any other artwork. For a start, it is not self-contained, it is not autonomously generated, and it cannot possibly constitute the evidence of its own truth.

The "conspiracy theorists" [sic] you sling together in a ragbag, stick a thoughtstopping label on & slag off so intemperately have at least noticed that, even if not all of them have drawn conclusions I can share 100%.

Watch that other movie I linked to, if you ever find the time. It's not nearly as funny as Withnail, but then not every truth can be funny, to say nothing of the many corporate-media untruths it depicts and describes.

Down with thoughtstopping Guardianista labels! The only people they help are warmongering bastards.

chimp said...

Nothing to see here now... move along, move along.

Nothing left here but the recordings....

And all's well that ends well.

Night night.

Night.