A rant about conspiracy nuts

My first ever attempt at questioning the established world view, were the NWO/Illuminati conspiracy theories. I watched alot of Alex Jones' documentaries and ofcourse the Zeitgeist movies (which I actually still like, for reasons I will explain later).

For some reason however, these theories failed to convince me. One of the problems as I perceived them at the time, was the tendency to get alot of facts mixed up with some rather dubious speculation. For example: I remember watching Endgame by Alex Jones and at one point, he claimed that the NWO-elites wanted to exterminate vast numbers of people (If I remember correctly, it was either 1/3 or 2/3 of the global population). Now this claim just seemed made up. I certainly couldn't discern this conclusion from any of the factual claims he made in the documentary (I think it was preceded by him pointing out that the US had taken in alot of Nazi doctors for eugenic research). These sort of things made me a bit wary of these conspiracy theories.

Institutional analysis

Second -and I didn't realize this until later- these conspiracy theories usually lack any kind of institutional analysis, which seems vital to me for offering a solution to the problem. After watching a documentary, you are left wondering: what now? Is everything going to be okay if only we could get rid of these evil people and replace them with the 'good guys'? It seemed to me that there has to be a better answer than this.

This is what seperates Chomsky from the average conspiracy nut. He looks at what people with power do and follows up by examing why they do what they do. What is their institutional role, how do these institutions function and what needs to change in order to achieve a better world? Now this is something that is actually useful. And Zeitgeist has at least -whatever you think of it- moved into a more analytical and solution-driven direction with their latest two releases. Which is why I still enjoy their work.

Dogma & trivial issues

Conspiracy theorists also seem to attract a dogmatic cult-like gathering around them. Anyone who questions their beliefs -like Chomsky with regards to the 9/11 conspiracy- is denounced as a puppet of the CIA or a so-called 'left gatekeeper'. According to some, WikiLeaks also serves as a propaganda outlet because they are not releasing documents that confirm their grand conspiracies.

On a finale note, conspiracy theorists also seem obsessed with the most trivial of things like the Bilderberg Group. I never understood why they get so worked up about this. Wake up people, this is the age of technology. These people don't operate in a vacuum 364 days a year. If there is an evil conspiracy, I highly doubt stopping them from getting together at this particular meeting will be much of a hindrance to them.

Manufacturing consent & the Dutch media

I've been a fan of Chomsky for some time now and one thing I find interesting in particular, is his claim that the media manufacture consent to serve the interests of power. One way they do this, is by allowing a lively debate but only within a very narrow spectrum of opinion. In his work he cites many examples to prove his point.

Being an American, his work is primarily focused on the media in the US, which arguably might be more servile to power than the media in other Western countries. But the Dutch media is of more interest to me.

The noble West

The Arab uprisings provide a showcase example of this phenomenon. The uprising in Egypt gained the most attention and while at first I expected the long-time US (and the West in general) support for the Mubarak regime to go unmentioned, it was actually mentioned quite often. What was interesting however, is the way they framed the debate about this issue.

Whenever it was discussed, our commitment to democracy and human rights was rarely ever questioned. Support for Mubarak may have been denounced as a strategic error, but our intentions were noble. That is: to maintain 'stability' and peace in the region. Surely we wouldn't do it for our own selfish interests.

The exceptions

One of the few exceptions I've seen was an opinion article in the newspaper Trouw, where historian Geert Somsen equated our support for Mubarak as support for terror. His article was quite a relief after waiting for weeks for anyone to at least ask the question: 'what does this say about our commitment to democracy and human rights?' It seems like such an obvious question to ask when someone mentions how we've supported a brutal dictator. But apparantly, the possibility of our leaders not being the heroes of the free world we'd like to think they are, is inconceivable to most of our journalists.

Another exception -although not as fierce as Somsen- was journalist Joris Luyendijk, when asked to comment in a documentary about our close relationship with many Arab dictators. He seemed sceptic of our supposedly noble intentions and was flabbergasted by a video of an interviewer for the tv-show Nieuwsuur (News Hour), failing to confront the prime-minister with our support for dictators while he was making great declarations about his love for democracy.

It is nice to know that there's atleast some room for such dissident voices. But overall the media failed horribly in asking the questions that really matter.

Welcome!

In case anyone besides myself ever gets to read this: welcome to my blog!

I'm interested in a wide range of topics. International affairs in general (hence the name of my blog), US/Western foreign policy in particular, domestic Dutch politics, the religion vs. atheism debate, Islam, anarchism and Marxism to name a few.

The focus will mostly be on current events in international affairs. Occasionally I'll branch off onto other topics of interest to me and I might do some book reviews as well.