A Doomsday Reader: Prophets, Predictors, and Hucksters of Salvation

Chapter 6. Myths of Power: Conspiracies, Revenge, and The Turner Diaries

• c h a p t e r 6 • MYTHS OF POWER Conspiracies, Revenge, and The Turner Diaries Conspiracy theory is frequently at the heart of millenarian thinking; we have seen examples already in Mein Kampf (chapter 3) and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (chapter 5). An important point about conspiracy theory is that it very often has some basis in fact.1 One such fact is that no organization can conduct all its business in public. If it had to consult its constituency about every decision, none of them could be carried out. Another fact is that organizations often work toward purposes they don’t divulge. The CIA and the National Security Agency, to name just two, work this way. The nature of conspiracist thought is no better conveyed than in this quotation from one of Jeffrey Kaplan’s informants: “I’m a student of Bible prophecy. . . . I’m also a Vietnam veteran who has fought Communism . Partly because of that I was determined from the start to fit Communism into Bible Prophesy [sic], if at all possible. I looked for evidence that the Antichrist, the Beast, the Man of Sin, Gog (all names of the same man) was a Soviet leader. I found it.”2 Like many theologians before him, this student found evidence to support what he was “determined ” to show. Conspiracy theory is an inversion and doubling of Gnostic ideas about salvation through arcane knowledge. Gnostics believe that they possess exclusive access to this divine, or at any rate hidden, knowledge about the secret workings of the world; conspiracists believe that other people have such knowledge and use it to control the world and nearly everyone in it. This knowledge is not exclusive, however, because another tiny minority also knows the secret: the conspiracists themselves. In the conspiracists’ 108 view of the workings of the world, the controllers are intent only on domination and oppression; salvation lies in their own hands. As Kaplan points out, believers in theories of this kind perceive themselves to be on a “promethean” quest: to reveal to the rest of mankind the truth behind the world’s wickedness, though it may cost them friends, jobs, and marriages.3 Still they find comfort with one another, in the occult milieu where these ideas circulate and come to roost. Conspiracy theorists conduct thorough, painstaking research (much conspiratorialist history of the Bavarian Illuminati, for instance, is accurate : It really was a secret benevolent society founded in 1776 on the model of the Freemasons, then an important source of progressive ideas) leading to completely unjustified conclusions. There is always a leap of dystopian faith into the realm of the utterly implausible, if not the downright impossible . It is as certain as anything can be that the Illuminati as an organization did not survive its suppression. It is even more certain that the society cannot claim credit for the French Revolution, despite the fact that it promoted many of the same ideas. But these ideas had been in general circulation throughout Europe for about a generation before the society came into existence. Conspiracy theory generally attributes much greater power to elites than they actually possess. In this kind of thought, nothing happens that is not ordained; there are no unintended consequences, and literally everything the Establishment says is a lie. Conspiracy theory allows no room for mistakes . Literally everything the elite does is somehow part of its satanic aims, no matter how self-destructive some of its behavior might seem to the rest of us. We might contrast this view with the regular blundering and foolishness of state-sponsored programs. Public housing projects destroyed within a generation of their construction provide one example. So does Vietnam, or nearly any war for that matter. Many more instances, as well as fascinating observations on the reasons for these failures, can be found in Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott.4 These failures generally rest on a mirror image of conspiracy thought: Planners convince themselves that the goal they have in mind can be reached through the application of rational abstract principles that fail to take real, local conditions into account. Their oversight dooms the plan. By assuming their • MYTHS OF POWER • 109 own infallibility, the planners behave exactly like the omnipotent behemoths the conspiracists think they are. Conspiracy theory, even when it is not overtly apocalyptic, shares attributes of apocalyptic thinking. Nothing less...