How The Left Got Fucked: Part Four

On the Conspiracy of the Capitalists

This is the fourth installment of this series. The first (free to read) is here.

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…when the lower classes come up with theories of power and agency, they are “conspiracy theories.” When the upper classes do it instead (as, for example, theories about Russian influence in Trump’s election), they’re merely “stating facts.”

This is because the neoliberal upper classes and their instruments (like the CIA) are part of the sacred order, the guardians of “open society.” They’re the elect, the elite, the defenders of democracy and freedom against the demonic whispers constantly seeking to undermine the community of the faithful. And, as I’ve been showing throughout this series, even the supposed opposition to this order has been shaped and influenced by the very same instruments of the sacred order.

The “anti-communist left,” which we can probably in all accuracy call the only left that is allowed to exist, poses no threat nor even obstacle to the continuation of capitalism.

The day after Christmas in 1977, the New York Times reported on a declassified internal CIA document written more than ten years before. Introducing the document, the report begins:

The Central Intelligence Agency has often argued that its worldwide propaganda efforts are intended only to alter the climate of public opinion in other countries and that any “fallout” reaching the eyes and ears of Americans is both unavoidable and unintentional.

But a C.I.A. document, recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, provides a detailed account of at least one instance in which the agency mustered its propaganda machinery to support an issue of far more concern to Americans, and to the C.I.A. itself, than to citizens of other countries.¹

The specific document was a cable sent to various CIA offices throughout the world, advising its agents on how to subvert any talk about the spy agency’s potential involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit circulation of such claims in other countries….

Though not the first time the term “conspiracy theory” was used in America, the CIA’s document is unique in being the first significant political use of the term. From our perspective decades later, it’s quite difficult even to imagine “conspiracy theory” as anything other than a derogatory and dismissive label. At best implying a theory is misguided, but more often insinuating it to be a product of an unhinged and unstable mind, the moment an idea becomes the target of this label it is no longer considered reasonable or even safe to countenance.

At its most basic meaning, a conspiracy is merely a plotting-together (seen best in its French analog, complot — “co-plot”), which is something no one could reasonably argue does not happen. Thus, a conspiracy theory is merely a set of suppositions about who might be plotting together, why they might be doing so, and towards what ends they’ve conspired.

In other words, it’s a proposed explanation, just like the Big Bang theory or evolution. And just as with those cited theories which we’ve come to almost universally accept as true, a conspiracy theory is limited by the inability of humans to have actually witnessed the proposed processes and must therefore extrapolate from indirect evidence, conclusions drawn from examination of history, and also some degree of intuitive hunches.

But that’s not how we encounter conspiracy theories. Instead, the term functions as a weapon to shut out any serious exploration of the ideas, especially when it relates to political agency. Take, for example, the “lab leak” origin theory of Covid-19, a topic particularly relevant for our discussion on how the “left” got fucked. Originally dismissed as “only” a conspiracy theory, those who proposed it were quickly ridiculed and labeled as “anti-science” or worse. Media corporations, most notably Facebook (now Meta), immediately censored reports and statements suggesting otherwise at the behest of the US government.² Yet just a few years later, this “conspiracy theory” is now considered a reasonable and even likely accurate explanation for what happened.

Labeling the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory” functioned in a similar (or in fact identical) way to how papal theological prohibitions functioned in the Middle Ages. It became a denkverbot — a “forbidden thought” — which no good or reasonable person (or in the Middle Ages, a good Christian) would allow themselves to pursue. Thus, anyone who nevertheless indulged in such forbidden thoughts then became judged as neither good nor reasonable.

Despite our supposedly modern and secular sensibilities, the theological framework of prohibitions on thought continues on into our views on conspiracy theories in another important way, which is that of sinister agency. Within the monotheistic framework, forbidden thoughts do not arise only out of the wanderings of our minds. Instead, they have external sources and derive from nefarious agencies meant to lead us astray or even into rebellion against the social order itself.

You can see this quite clearly a little later in the New York Times report about the CIA’s communiqué, where the sinister agency³ behind those conspiracy theories is named:

Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.

Here, “Communist propagandists” functions the same way the demonic functioned in Christian prohibitions on thought. Just as Satan was constantly whispering to the faithful to lead them away from the one true faith, Communists were whispering from the shadows to tempt Americans away from capitalism.