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Article Excerpt
EMILE DURKHEIM ONCE OBSERVED: "There is perhaps no collective representation which is not, in some sense, delirious" (qtd. in Moscovici, 1987, p. 157). I begin this response by acknowledging that we all might be more prone than we realize to the powerful, often beguiling nature of conspiracy appeals. As Stewart, Smith, & Denton (1994, pp. 52-53) observe, a "conspiracy may be real or imagined, but the process is the same; a chain of apparently unrelated events or actions is linked to reveal concerted actions and intentions to cause all sorts of social, economic, political, religious, and moral problems." (1) In the process, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. It also may be difficult to avoid delirium.
The Continuing Appeal of the Birch Society
Robert Welch once publicly asserted that Republican Senator Robert Taft had died of cancer that had been passed on to him by Soviet operatives through "a radium tube planted in the upholstery of his Senate seat" (Pipes, 1997, p. 37). The description of this absurd scenario can take on the patina of legitimacy when, for example, such claims are made in a cold war setting where reputable sources report that KGB agents, in an effort to get a British spy out of a room, smeared a poisonous substance on a chair and made the intended victim violently ill. Telling the real from the imaginary can be a difficult and demanding task. There are legions of subjective judgments attached.
The reference to Welch is, of course, a not so subtle transition to Professor Stewart's essay. Stewart rightly observes that the changing context of the times has everything to do with the believability and potential acceptance of conspiratorial forces. In fact, the social, historical, geographic, temporal, and contextual dimensions of change help account for the popularity or demise of particular conspiracy accounts. In the John Birch Society, we encounter a remarkable longevity and persistence. Professor Stewart persuasively documents why this is the case. I believe the Birchers have latched on to a classic conspiracy model; it is made even more complete because it is imbued with transhistorical significance through what Stewart terms "interlocking conspiracies." Indeed, Stewart gives a convincing account of how the Society made the transition from one conspiracy context to the next. In Stewart's apt phrase, it was an "effortless shift." This shift is particularly striking since we are now in the post-Soviet, post-Cold War era. Welch's guiding principles help establish the generic parameters of conspiracy discourse. Key themes, like the "cancer of collectivism," the master conspiracy tracing its roots to the secret 18th century Bavarian society that came to be known as the Illuminati, all the way to the "invisible government" represented by the nefarious agents of Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, to the god and devil terms associated with the New World Order, and the attribution of a moral decline associated with the "family," strike, one and all, old familiar refrains. Indeed, the characters and actions emerge like family members in a long lost but constantly resurrected picture album handed down through the generations. In this company and with these images, an article such as "My Mother the State" becomes a generic warrant for all that is wrong with America and a clarion call to action against "wrongdoers" (see e.g., Goldzwig, 1987). Thus, in conspiracy, active participants and dupes alike march inexorably toward the precipice of impending disaster. Ostensibly, only true believers can stanch the rising tides of ruin.
What is most convincingly documented in Professor Stewart's account is a vivid description and analysis of a rhetoric of dystopian logic that has accomplished transgenerational influence through a contextually constructed substitution of terms--each of which blurs distinctions as they chain out over time. In addition, Professor Stewart's explanation for why the John Birch Society has maintained its credibility is both informative and convincing. I believe it is also a harbinger of our common future. I am convinced by Professor Stewart's essay that this rhetoric will not go away.
Professor Stewart develops an intriguing answer to an interesting question: How can we account for the fact that the John Birch Society survived and thrived despite the decline of the cold war and the dissolution of the old Soviet Union and the nefarious plots associated with the "communist menace"? The answer, it seems, is that the Birchers had relied upon a broad-based ideology that combined themes of communist conspiracy, big government, and the evils of collectivism into a grand master conspiracy that was both timely and credible to a host of Americans. The decline of Communism, rather than posing a threat to the Birchers and their organization, was transformed by true believers into a mere "phase" in a grand conspiracy of collectivization. Thus, what could have been an organizational disaster was rhetorically transformed into yet another transparent "proof." Such malleability is central to the survival of conspiracy theories and their proponents. For true believers, the New World Order signaled a new "phase" in the conspiracy, one purportedly even more dire than that presented by the cold war and the "communist menace." Rhetorical adaptation to changing circumstances means, in this instance, reconfiguring circumstances to aims and designs of an all-powerful set of entities almost certain to appeal to those enamored with and interested in promoting a paranoid style. The appearance of initiatives which appeared to predict a move to a One World Government reenlivened grist for conspiracy rhetoric and extended its reach. Here, once again, national sovereignty was threatened both materially and symbolically. The opportunity for "fiendish plots" proliferates under the "master conspiracy" rationale and it provides, like most rhetorics of conspiracy, an incredible array of opportunities to capitalize on self-fulfilling prophecy.
Just as history is transformed in the Birch Society narrative into a series of interlocking conspiracies, so too are the presumed social manifestations. To my mind, perhaps the most powerful contemporary rhetorical adaptation to be found in the Birch Society's discourse is the ongoing lamentation on the "moral decline" in America. The presumed imminent break up of the "family" and "family values" is read as a harbinger of the breakdown and dissolution of the republic. Birchers, like many of...
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