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FeedsMore on conspiracy mongering. Coming up with conspiracy theories is a pathological way of dealing with too much information (which threatens to bury us, confront us with our utter insignificance), with often strikingly inventive and ingenious results. But perhaps more often, the results are pernicious and hateful, prompting deranged people to commit crimes in the name of their disturbed theories. If the hypothesis that conspiracies derive from stunted creative energy with no socially sanctioned outlet holds, would creating these theories provide an outlet for such people’s unstable pent-up energy, their alienation and feelings of powerlessness? Does it help them let off steam, defusing the danger they otherwise represent? Or do the theories necessarily harden them in their madness, providing justification to go further, to act, to murder a bunch of celebrities on Cielo Drive, or a guard at the Holocaust Museum.
This article by Mark Oppenheimer, the first of a series, (via the Atlantic’s Ideas blog) promises to investigate what drives Holocaust deniers to reject history in favor of nebulous and despised conspiracy theories. The first installment contains this remarkable exchange between the author and Bradley Smith, a 79-year-old Holocaust denier.
Once we were both seated at the coffee shop, I tried to ask Smith about possible flaws in the works of great Holocaust historians.
“You’ve read all the standard accounts,” I asked, “like Lucy Dawidowicz and Raul Hilberg?”
“Yeah,” Smith said, “that’s what I started with, I read Hilberg. I didn’t read them very closely. Because I’m not really interested in the history of the period.”
I was a little shocked. “I mean, you read Lucy Dawidowicz’s book on the period? You read David Wyman?”
“Not thoroughly,” Smith said. “Wyman, I didn’t read. He came a bit too late.”
I was astounded. “But that’s kind of amazing, right? Because here are these classic works of Holocaust literature that purport to show it all and you say you haven’t read them closely. So you have read Arthur Butz, who’s a nobody in the field, closely, but you haven’t read the great titans in the field closely?”
“You know what? I’m not interested in the story,” he replied. “Revisionists have written very detailed documents about the holes—”
“So what are you interested in?”
“In a free exchange of ideas.”
“But you aren’t interested in trying to find out which ideas are right?”
“Not particularly. You know what I’m really interested in? Every generation has its taboo, and I happen to be here with this taboo. I happen to be here with this one. And I can see how it’s exploited, and who benefits from the exploitation.”
Smith wants to reason backward to some crazy version of the “truth” by starting with the bad incentives of supposed “exploiters” of history, all while regarding history itself as insignificant. But if history doesn’t matter, what is even at stake? As he says, the “free exchange of ideas,” but what that really means is his freedom to be recognized as different in a culture that seems to encourage sameness and at times projects images of a homogeneous people all believing the same things. (“The Nazis were evil.” “Everybody loves the Beatles.”) It’s a grandiose way of signaling resistance to the normative culture of our time (to borrow a phrase Amitai Etzioni uses in this TNR article). What is at stake for him in his Holocaust denial is not history at all or even his urge to disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda. Rather, it’s nothing other than his own reputation as a stalwart nonconformist. Holocaust denial ends up seeming like the extreme version of hating Coldplay because they are popular.
Conspiracy theories are a way to account for inconsistency between the perceived magnitude of the evil and the perceived magnitude of the perpetrator(s).
People want the universe to make sense. It feels imbalanced for one person, like Lee Harvey Oswald, to in a single moment have such a dramatic effect on the the world. The perceived magnitude of the evil far outweighs the perceived magnitude of the perpetrator.
Calm acceptance of this imbalance requires either great faith, or an acceptance that the universe has no inherent meaning. The minds of people between these extremes seek explanations for how a meaningful universe could allow such imbalance.
In most cases (9/11, JFK assassination, OKC) conspiracy theorists claim a group is responsible because the publicly accepted perpetrator or group of perpetrators are too insignificant for the magnitude of the effect. They inflate the perpetrator side of the equation. Holocaust deniers adjust the other side of the equation: the magnitude of the evil. They say the Holocaust occurred, but it wasn’t as big a deal as we’ve been told. In both cases, there’s an adjustment to make the magnitude of the evil match the magnitude of the perpetrators.
This doesn’t explain everything about the phenomenon, but it explains something.
P.S. I love the line about not liking Coldplay because they are too popular.
Posted by jimstoic from Santa Barbara, CA on June 27, 2009 at 5:51 pm
So how does this explain the country of Turkey’s claims that the Armenian Genocide never happened? I think denial is the simple response of a bigot. Let’s not over analyze this. They aren’t worth it.
Posted by Louis Werham on June 28, 2009 at 5:29 am
I would separate conspiracy theorists into three categories:
1) Cultural (that is, people who may be taught a conspiracy theory as fact without having access to contrasting info. I am thinking of the propaganda put forth by some Muslim governments in this case.)
2. Adversarial (Holocaust deniers fit into this category. So would any conspiracy that ascribes sinister motives to a politician or corporation. Think of the old “Clinton killed Vince Foster” meme, and the current “Obama is a secret Muslim” meme.
3)Self- Aggrandizing (This one has elements of the Adversarial Theorists, but the end result lacks the potential for violence or incinations to take action). Alien invasion and UFO theorists fir this bill.)
It is this category that I’d like to elaborate on, because it is stimulated by info that is the opposite of the ones you listed above.
First of all, it is often sparked by lack of info (weird lights in the sky + no government explanation = UFOs.) Scientific explanations reinforce the conspiracy.
Second, it raises a sense of danger without making the theorist actually fearful of daily life. It dramatizes the world we live in, in other words, making the theorist feel “special” or an “insider” on secret knowledge most have not figured out. So it boosts the theorists’ self-importance; they have been born in very interesting times and they will therefore play some kind of special role as an observer or participant of the evidence off this conspiracy.
I would include most End Time theorists in this category. Very few End Times people are inclined towards violence or action. They are observers, and they expect to whisked away from all the bad stuff because they are believers. Again, these theorists are ultimately motivated by the desire to believe that they are living in an important time. It reinforces the importance of their lives, for they will witness something most of humanity never has.
Posted by Glenn Liddy from USA on June 28, 2009 at 2:57 pm
The Turks don’t see themselves as evil; the Armenian genocide was (or, to the denier, would have been) evil; so it must not have happened.
Posted by jimstoic from Santa Barbara, CA on June 28, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I like the categories, but I don’t see people who believe in UFOs or “end times” as conspiracy theorists unless they think there is a conspiracy to keep the truth from people in general. The same is true with the Clinton killed Vince Foster meme: the “murder” isn’t a conspiracy; only keeping the true story from the public would be a conspiracy.
Posted by jimstoic from Santa Barbara, CA on June 28, 2009 at 8:03 pm
The topic of conspiracy theories relative to the Holocaust and the denial thereof is an interesting one. While the concept of “conspiracy theory” is typically met with skepticism and suggest shadowy figures or shadowy governments working to perpetrate some crime, one must recognize that the Holocaust itself is a grand conspiracy. The Nazi government acted to carry out a crime in complete secrecy. In fact, code words were used and no actual straightforward orders were ever issued. The crimes were hidden with attempts to burn all the murdered. The WMD’s (Gas chambers) were destroyed in the final months of the war.
Revisionists like Smith don’t claim that there was a conspiracy to establish a “lie” about the Holocaust for some ulterior motive. Rather Smith in particular asks for free investigation into the Holocaust without fear of incarceration or persecution as exists throughout most of Europe. The Holocaust is the only conspiracy theory protected by law.
Posted by Richard Widmann from USA on September 15, 2009 at 11:24 am