Back Towards The Locus

“Today,” Frank Furedi wrote in 2007, “Politicians are…likely to advise the public to fear everything, including fear itself.” It’s ironic, then, that in his critique of the “suspicion and mistrust” of “conspiratorial thinking“, he comes across as a bit, well, overanxious about the whole thing.

Advocacy organisations, political activists and the media are attracted to the idea that behind every headline there lays a hidden agenda. The idea of hidden agendas has influenced discussions on the war in Iraq, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the outbreak of swine flu.

I’ll wait for the clatter of jaws to subside…

…thank you. Is Furedi saying that there weren’t hidden agendas behind Iraq? The whole thing was just one great, big, farcical, innocent mistake? Perhaps. On the other hand, he could – in a rather clumsy way – be suggesting that people were much too quick to probe for Saddam’s “hidden agendas“.

This, too, would be a mistake: he probably did have agendas, but supporters of the war were far too willing to accept their governor’s depictions of them. This doesn’t suggest that people are too suspicious, it suggests that they’ve not been suspicious enough: retaining a selective, unjustified trust.

The media fuel this attitude by frequently arguing that what is important is not what public figures say but what their real agenda is. The media incite the public to look for hidden motives; that normalisation of suspicion and mistrust is the key accomplishment of today’s conspiratorial culture.

It seems dreadfully banal to point this out – and it would be tragic if presented as an original observation – but Furedi demands it, so here goes: disgustingly often, public figures lie.

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks recounts an occasion where some of his patients, aphasiacs, and acutely aware of the nuances of speech, were reduced to hysterical laughter by an address from Ronald Reagan: amused by “the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients“. To recognise the disingenuity of our governors, attentive citizens have needed no such conditions.

There was Tony Blair, of course, who waxed lyrical about “freedom, democracy, human rights [and] the rule of law” but consistently, and with great dishonesty, defied these values. Indeed, it’s been true for just about all prominent statespeople, whose supposedly passionate rhetoric has been founded on lies, and contradicted by actions.

Furedi is also mistaken in castigating the media for “incit[ing] the public to look for hidden motives” – they, too, aren’t suspicious enough. Oh, sure, they can sneer when it’s Russia or Iran, but when our politicians ooze into view they become rather more accommodating. For example, in March, a BBC reporter asserted that Tony Blair “passionately believed” that Iraq had WMDs. When challenged by a reader, she replied: “I said Mr Blair passionately believed Iraq had wmd because he has consistently said so.” I’m not sure what’s more surreal: the idea that Blair would come out and say “I’m sorry, guys, I had my fingers crossed behind my back”, or the idea that anyone could imagine that he would — either way, it befits the nightmares of a junkie, not the the evening news.

On every major issue of the day, the mainstream media has sunk to dumb regurgitation: G8, Iraq, Afghanistan – you name it. We’ve also seen the superlative optimism that’s been displayed towards the new President, despite the fact that a) his actions contradict his rhetoric, and b) as beautifully demonstrated here, his words aren’t really dissimilar to those of his predecessor.

The rise of conspiratorial thinking expresses the loss of causality and meaning in the contemporary world. History demonstrates that nothing is more frightening than when a community lacks a system of meaning through which it can understand the problems it confronts. In such circumstances, people feel powerless and confused and are sometimes drawn towards a simplistic version of events where everything is black and white or good and evil.

People do “lack a system of meaning through which [they] can understand the problems [they] confront“, and they are, indeed, “powerless“. Thus, all to often, they become “confused“. Some, it’s true, may be “drawn towards a simplistic version of events where everything is black and white or good and evil“.

According to Furedi, though, there are no agendas behind this powerlessness, and those who accuse the powerful of holding devious motives are merely expressing “mainstream prejudices“. Well, let’s recount some things that a) I’ve shown, or b) I think we agree on…

• Those in power are greatly deceitful.

• There are obviously great incentives to being deceitful.

• Those in the media often fail to draw attention to this.

• The effect of the deceits, and the bland acceptance of them, has been disastrous.

• The people themselves don’t have the power to hold their governors to account.

Considering this, it’s not only understandable that people embrace “the idea of hidden agendas“, it’s entirely sensible as well. More, please.