File:Demos-Conspiracy theories.pdf

The Power of Unreason

Conspiracy theories, extremism, and counter-terrorism

Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller
29 August 2010

A Demos publication

Wikispooks Comment

This paper is posted on Wikispooks as a good example of the power off "Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy" for the masses.

In company with all mainstream analysis - Left, Right and all points in between - the fundamental assumption underlying this paper is that the motives and consequent agenda's of society's Elites are benign. That is to say, they are in service to the common good of the mass of the population - or rather that the interests of the mass of the populations and the State are coincident. It is an unstated assumption; unstated because it is in fact an unwritten article of faith which cannot be questioned without jeopardizing ones aspirations to career, rank, position and place in society. To question the proposition that the interests of the State and those of the mass of population are, by definition, coincident, is a taboo in modern Western so-called democracies that can be questioned only as a means of ridiculing it - or demonising it as treasonous.

And so it is with this paper. Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller clearly have academic ambitions to further. They conclude that the Security Services should be more open (ie less secret). In doing so they will no doubt be indulgently applauded and criticised in equal measure by the the arbiters of the State's secrets. After all it is proof, is it not, of our society's openness to 'free-speech' and uncomfortable criticisms?

The possibility that the pathological secrecy, not only of our Security Services, but of all departments and agencies of the State concerned with foreign affairs and "Security", might have something to do with defense of the indefensible - in furtherance of agenda's which the mass of the population might be less than enamored with - is neither explored nor explorable.

After all Daddy knows best; Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are very real and will not like it if you are bad - The only problem with the analogy being a total absence of corresponding altruism-in-the-telling on the part of our Lords, Masters and Betters.

Think of the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded foot-soldiers in the trenches of the First World War, in pursuit of the agendas of THEIR Lords, Masters and Betters.

Queen (King) and country (The last refuge of scoundrels) still rules now, as it did than - and to hell with common humanity.