Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

The re­cent rev­e­la­tions in the Wash­ing­ton Post and UK Guardian con­cern­ing the US Gov­ern­ment's PRISM pro­gramme raise the ques­tion: when is a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry not a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry?

For a long time some peo­ple around the world claimed the US Gov­ern­ment was mon­i­tor­ing all our elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions in a Big Broth­er quest for world dom­i­na­tion. With­out ev­i­dence, this be­lief was la­belled a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and those with such be­liefs dis­par­aged as cuck­oo.Now there is ev­i­dence the US Gov­ern­ment is in­volved with mon­i­tor­ing (or at least record­ing for fu­ture analy­sis) much of the elec­tron­ic in­for­ma­tion each of us pro­duces. Does this new ev­i­dence dis­solve the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry? First some facts. What is a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry? Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries cor­re­late to times of so­cial anx­i­ety. They give mean­ing to dra­mat­ic and vague oc­cur­rences, pro­vid­ing nar­ra­tive to the re­la­tions be­tween events, in­di­vid­u­als, and larg­er so­cial in­sti­tu­tions.Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries fall un­der the study of myths and re­ly on a cul­tur­al log­ic that says the ab­sence of ev­i­dence is ev­i­dence. From an an­thro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries–or nar­ra­tives con­cern­ing plots, hatched by a re­al or imag­i­nary pow­er and groups–are uni­ver­sal, found in all cul­tures and stages of hu­man his­to­ry.

The car­go cults of Melane­sia and the mil­len­ni­al­ist move­ments of colo­nial so­ci­eties such as the Ghost Dance of Na­tive Amer­i­cans and the Xhosa cat­tle-killing of South Africa are good ex­am­ples to look up.Now be­fore any­one thinks it is on­ly cra­zies or the ex­otics who be­lieve in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, it's worth recog­nis­ing that the War on Ter­ror it­self is a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry pro­duced and em­braced by the US po­lit­i­cal class.Any dis­cus­sion of the long his­to­ry of US atroc­i­ties, poli­cies, and the desta­bil­i­sa­tion of elect­ed for­eign gov­ern­ments dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry was, and is, ig­nored. In­stead, Bush and his cronies fed the world a sto­ry about a sin­gu­lar de­monised en­e­my–Al Qae­da–out to at­tack Amer­i­can ex­cep­tion­al­ism, first led by Sad­dam and then Osama. Un­der PRISM, the en­e­my could now be any of us, even peo­ple who be­lieve they have noth­ing to hide. By record­ing our elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the US Gov­ern­ment can now take that in­for­ma­tion, search through every­thing we've ever done, and paint any of us as vil­lains.Who's crazy now? The US Gov­ern­ment is it­self lost in a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry about the rest of the world, all po­ten­tial­ly out to get them. That isn't nec­es­sar­i­ly a sur­prise. Aca­d­e­mics have been writ­ing about a "para­noid style of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics" since the 1960s.

The thing about con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries then is that they leave us with an ex­pla­na­tion of events that is more of­ten than not root­ed in para­noia rather than hard ev­i­dence.As such, a use­ful way to un­der­stand con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries is as fis­sures to iden­ti­fy pow­er strug­gles in so­ci­ety over mean­ing and moral­i­ty.So rather than Oba­ma as Dr Evil, or the com­plete in­no­cence of the US Gov­ern­ment, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries sug­gest we should be look­ing some­where in be­tween for truth(s).For ex­am­ple, which is more like­ly–that the US Gov­ern­ment be­lieves they act in their coun­try's in­ter­ests, or that a group of peo­ple–in­clud­ing every­one in the NSA, FBI, CIA etc–is en­gaged in a vast con­spir­a­cy for their own ben­e­fit (or Dr Evil's), with no one on the in­side ever ex­pos­ing it? Not even Ed­ward Snow­den?The prob­lem the US Gov­ern­ment, and in par­tic­u­lar its var­i­ous wings like the NSA has is they can­not be the judges of their own ac­tions. Their over­sight must be trans­par­ent. Yet, due to the se­cret na­ture of its busi­ness, sup­pos­ed­ly no one else can mon­i­tor them.

So the NSA grew its pow­er, al­ways be­liev­ing, as it was the good guy, that any­one seek­ing to re­strict it need­ed to be op­posed. All in the pub­lic in­ter­est, of course. In oth­er words, the NSA drank their own Kool Aid and be­came both ar­chi­tect and pur­vey­or of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.This brings us back to the ques­tion: when is a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry not a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry? A con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is not a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry when it is the cul­tur­al log­ic di­rect­ing re­alpoli­tik.Once para­noid myth-mak­ing be­comes the en­gine of po­lit­i­cal ac­tion, Gov­ern­ments no longer make de­ci­sions based on ev­i­dence. In­stead they run on ev­i­dence of things un­seen, us­ing fear and moral pan­ic to main­tain pow­er.Philo­soph­i­cal­ly, it rais­es a sim­i­lar anal­o­gy to that sci­en­tif­ic sto­ry about tur­tles and "in­fi­nite regress." But in­stead of the com­plex­i­ty of the cos­mos rest­ing on "tur­tles all the way down," we see the com­plex­i­ty of the end­less War on Ter­ror rests on con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries all the way down.

Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.