Age of conspiracies

This picture has been buzzing round the internet immediately after the Boston bombings. Who is this man?

The Boston bombings are compelling firstly because they are awful to contemplate but secondly because they are, as of yet, motiveless (if it was Al-Qaeda we would have been told straight away). The President initially did not even call the bombings and act of terrorism, then he did, but he still upset some people.

For the time being there is room for myth-making and pareidolia. What was that man doing on the roof? What would anyone do on a roof?

There are immediate psychological reasons for embracing conspiracy theories, the solidarity of the initiated, perverse reassurance about human agency and so on.  There are political reasons why one may promote a conspiracy theory, or conspiracism in general. Fear and projection are key stimulating factors for right wing populist movements, the tributaries of fascism.

The unacceptable attributes of the self, in this case a political body, for example a nation or a race, are projected on the enemy, who is always more powerful, cunning and prolific. Triumph over the enemy requires urgent action, great passion is mobilised, and it becomes a transforming force. It helps also when you find attributes of the enemy within the political body, these people become ‘traitors’ and can be dealt with peremptorily (btw – is anyone else spotting a similarity between this and the SWP CC’s epistemology of internal debate? – a leap I appreciate, but word has it Alex Callinicos turned up at a CC meeting with a copy of the infamous Facebook conversation and started ranting about conspiracies).

There is a short Marxist rider to this, we live in the age of public life, where all the formal decisions about society are taken in the open, yet society seems to career down strange, unwarranted paths beyond any apparent human control. Noam Chomsky contrasts conspiracy theories to institutional analysis. Conspiracies fill the gap left by the absence of the theory of class rule, the nature of the state. Perhaps this means they are part of the operation of bourgeois hegemony? In which case more consideration is necessary.