The Witch Hunt against Independent Research and Analysis
By James F. Tracy
A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent
research and analysis available via alternative news media. This March
saw the release of “cognitive infiltration” advocate Cass Sunstein’s new
book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. In April, the
confirmed federal intelligence-gathering arm, Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC), released a new report, “Agenda 21: The UN,
Sustainability, and Right Wing Conspiracy Theory.” Most recently,
Newsweek magazine carried a cover story, titled, “The Plots to Destroy
America: Conspiracy Theories Are a Clear and Present Danger.”
As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now
familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in Central Intelligence
Agency Document 1035-960, the 1967 memo laying out a strategy for CIA
“media assets” to counter criticism of the Warren Commission and attack
independent investigators of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
At that time the targets included attorney Mark Lane and New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison, who were routinely defamed and lampooned
in major US news outlets.
Declassified government documents have proven Lane and Garrison’s
allegations of CIA-involvement in the assassination largely accurate.
Nevertheless, the prospect of being subject to the conspiracy theorist
smear remains a potent weapon for intimidating authors, journalists, and
scholars from interrogating complex events, policies, and other
potentially controversial subject matter.
As the title of Newsweek’s feature story indicates, a primary element
of contemporary propaganda campaigns using the conspiracy theory/ist
label is to suggest that citizens’ distrust of government imperatives
and activities tends toward violent action. The “conspiracy theorist”
term is intentionally conflated with “conspiracist,” thus linking the
two in the mass mind. Images of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, and
Osama bin Laden are subtly invoked when the magic terms are referenced.
In reality, it is typically Western governments using their police or
military who prove the foremost purveyors of violence and the threat of
violence—both domestically and abroad.
In his Newsweek article, author and journalist Kurt Eichenwald
selectively employs the assertions of the SPLC, Sunstein, and a handful
of social scientists to postulate in Orwellian fashion that independent
research and analysis of the United Nations’ Agenda 21, the
anti-educational thrust of “Common Core,” the dangers of vaccine injury
and water fluoridation, and September 11—all important policies and
issues worthy of serious study and concern—are a “contagion” to the body
politic.
In a functioning public, honest academics and journalists would
uninhibitedly delve into these and similar problems–GMOs,
state-sponsored terrorism, the dangers of non-ionizing radiation–
particularly since such phenomena pose grave threats to both popular
sovereignty and self determination. Such intellectuals would then
provide important findings to foster vigorous public debate.
Absent this, segments of the populace still capable of critical
thought are inclined to access and probe information that leads them to
question bureaucratic edicts and, in some cases, suggest a potentially
broader political agenda. In today’s world, however, such research
projects carried out by the hoi polloi that are expressly reserved for
government or foundation-funded technocrats “’distort the debate that is
crucial to democracy,’” says Dartmouth political scientist Brendan
Nyhan.
With the above in mind, a simple yet instructive exercise in
illustrating the psycholinguistic feature of the conspiracy theory
propaganda technique is to replace “conspiracy theories/ists” with the
phrase, “independent research and analysis,” or “independent
researchers.” Let us apply this to some passages from Eichenwald’s
recent Newsweek piece.
For example, “Psychological research has shown that the only trait
that consistently indicates the probability someone will believe in
conspiracy theories independent research and analysis is if that person
believes in other conspiracy theories independent research and
analysis,” Eichenwald sagely concludes.
“One of the most common ways of introducing conspiracy theories
independent research and analysis is to ‘just ask questions’ about an
official account,’’’ says Karen Douglas, co-editor of the British
Journal of Social Psychology and a senior academic … at Britain’s
University of Kent.”
In fact, substituting the phrases accordingly throughout the article
significantly neutralizes its overall propagandistic effect.
Researchers agree; independent research and analysis are espoused by
people at every level of society seeking ways of calming the chaos of
life, sometimes by simply reinforcing convictions.
While the growth in the number of news outlets has helped spread
independent research and analysis, it doesn’t compare to the impact of
social media and the Internet, experts say.
9/11 conspiracy theorists independent researchers protest outside the World Trade Center in 2011 [Photo caption]
“If you have social networks of people who are talking with one
another, you can have independent research and analysis spread in a
hurry,’’ says Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School … “It
literally is as if it was contagious.”
While some may dismiss independent researchers as ignorant or
unstable, research has shown that to be false. “The idea that only dumb
people believe this stuff is wrong,’’ says Dartmouth’s Nyhan.
People who more strongly believed in independent research and
analysis were significantly less likely to use sunscreen or have an
annual medical checkup.
According to a just-released report from the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the independent research and analysis flowed in April at a
hearing before Alabama’s Senate Education Committee about legislation to
allow school districts to reject Common Core.
It’s true. Since September 11, 2001 the internet has increasingly
allowed for everyday people to retrieve, study, and share information on
important events and phenomena as never before. And as a recent study
published in the prominent journal Frontiers of Psychology suggests,
tendering “alternative conspiracy theories” to the government-endorsed
explanations of September 11, 2001 is a sign of “individuation,” or
psychological well being and contentment.
Such a condition is a clear danger to those who wish to wield
uncontested political authority. Indeed, the capacity to freely
disseminate and discuss knowledge of government malfeasance is the
foremost counterbalance to tyranny. Since this ability cannot be readily
confiscated or suppressed, it must be ridiculed, marginalized, even
diagnosed as a psychiatric condition.
The recent abandonment of network neutrality may eventually further
subdue the nuisance of independent research, thought, and analysis.
Until then, the corporate media’s attempts to bamboozle and terrify the
American public with the well-worn conspiracy theory meme will be a
prevalent feature of what passes for news and commentary today.
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