The Secret Charm Of Plot Theory - Myths for a Stressful World
Politics / Conspiracy Theory Oct 26, 2014 - 12:37 PM GMTBy: Andrew_McKillop
Writing in his Economics Blog, Martin Armstrong asks a loaded question. How do you hide something that is already in plain view, whether its the fact oil prices have to fall, the US doesn't run or own a “unipolar” world, or climate changes isn't anything to do with global warming? You hide it by exaggerating it and anything related to it to the point that all or certain critical parts of the story or “narrative” becomes so extreme that you or anybody can convert it to a conspiracy theory. Whatever happened, it was all designed and planned and executed by very clever and probably evil persons long in advance. So you can go back to sleep, now.
With time, the event or series of events “that were all a conspiracy” become a so-called meta history in which the role of myths, opinions, beliefs and legend swamp the role of facts even if or when the facts become available, for example from government declassified documents or in the memoirs of a key spy (or claimed plot master) shortly before they die. The meta history becomes the main theory, whatever the facts. The conspiracy theory becomes official popular history if not scientific verified history
As Armstrong says, the basic “law” of propaganda is that creating it needs the endless repetition of lies with an equally basic exaggeration of the lies. If you keep saying a lie, you get to believe it yourself but more importantly it becomes the truth to many persons without ever having been proven and with no need to prove anything. The opposite, which is uncovering the truth, is a lot more difficult especially when the big lie has achieved the status of a myth, legend or tradition which has a Teflon shielding of social acceptance able to shrug off inconvenient reality.
One of our problems is that some conspiracy theories almost have an “ikonic” role and most people will say we either don't know or may never know the truth about them – but other plots and conspiracies are in a grey zone of maybe / maybe not. Ikonic conspiracies for example include 9 / 11, the assassination of Kennedy and murder of Marilyn Monroe, and the 2003 Iraq war and claimed WMD in Iraq. But we also have the flights MH370 and MH17 aircraft downings and deaths, global warming and peak oil, ISIS and the jihadists, the demise of the petrodollar and plenty of others.
In several of these cases some anti-conspiracists and truth diggers can for example say the Sept 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were not even an attack by terrorists and the whole thing was faked up. The attacks were planned and covered up by security services and governments. Armstrong is adamant there was a clear money motive for the 9 / 11 conspiracy and the attacks, which were real, destroyed highly embarassing information on US governmental and corporate wrongdoing
Plausible Denial
Either enabling plot theories to sprout like wild mushrooms on the Web, or deliberately creating them and running them alongside a real conspiracy can be summarized as the Plausible Denial plot theory. The narrative can get nearer to the real world in some parts of the Official Version, and can then insert the big lie or big exaggeration. For example that John F Kennedy had begun to sharply drift away from the US military-industrial complex, who did not organize his assassination, but Russian spies got hold of that information and the USSR moved its own assassination plot up to operational status. Likewise, Goldman Sachs did not gouge oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel on the US Nymex in 2008 to ruin SEM Group (who GS advised that oil prices “had to fall”) and enrich itself to the tune of about a half-billion dollars from the collapse of SEM Group. Goldman did it to bring on the market crash and save American capitalism from an even more extreme crash that wold have come later on. Other variants of plot theory for the 2008 global market crash stay in the USA, with the fragile meta history of one relatively small private bank and investment broker, Lehman Bros, not being treated as Too Big to Fail and not being saved from insolvency by the US Treasury Dept. This myth says the collapse of Lehman Bros “sent a shockwave of panic across the financial world”, from Boston to Beijing.
The world's security services are masters of plausible denial – to their own paymasters when the sleuths fumble their false flag operations, and the 'blowback” either exposes or reverses the intended results of their undercover operations. One present and unwinding case is ISIS or ISIL and its relations with US, Saudi and other Gulf state minders and backers, originally concerning the intended overthrow of Syria's Bashr al Assad, but spilling over to threaten the Baghdad federal government of Iraq – and the Sunni-minority regimes of the region despite the claimed Salafist sunni extremist “ideology” of ISIS or ISIL. Alternately, ISIS or ISIL may have been taken over by Turkey's undercover agencies in a failed attempt to stop Syrian Kurds from uniting with Iraqi Kurds. Another Middle Eastern false flag terror plot concerns Israeli secret service activity pursuing the Oded Yinon plan or doctrine of divide-and-rule in the region. Mossad ran long term false flag terror operations in Libya among other countries, but in this case enabled Muammar Gaddafi to claim he was a leading opponent of Islamic jihadist terror.
The exact opposite of plausible denial is also prevalent in plot theory and conspiracy organization, which we can call implausible claims of “paternity” and prior knowledge of surprise events. Staying with the case of Libya and Gaddafi's overthrow, the Benghazi killing of the US ambassador and leaks from circles close to then US state secretary Hillary Clinton purported to claim major US influence inside and among Libya's rebel militias dating from before the overthrow of Gaddafi. In other words US, French and British secret services played a key role in Gaddafi's downfall but mishandled and lost control of its sequels, so they were “only half incompetent”.
The Big Picture
Relatively sure and certain historical records show that British and French attempts to draw the US into World War I on their side, and German attempts to prevent that happening, were organized from the start of the war, including the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmermann telegram false flag, purporting to reveal a German-Mexican plot to invade the USA. The false flags used to intensify the Balkan wars of 1910-12, which for some historians were sure and certain preludes to World War I, and the leaking of the Sykes-Picot plan to carve up the Ottoman Empire after the war, by Vladimir Lenin who called it an Imperialist plot, are examples of leaked information on government and secret service undercover action dating back a hundred years or more.
The plot theories entwine with history to the extent they create a meta history where unraveling the course of events, and the plot-enhanced version is difficult or impossible. In all cases the undercover plots, even when known to the politicians who order or accept them, are denied and the official narrative of “normal and legal” political, diplomatic, economic and military action is maintained. How far apart they can diverge is often immense – as in the Middle East today, where the official narrative is that desired change in the region is towards “democracy and the market economy”. In Syria and Libya for example!
Also as proven by history in a large number of twin track plot-and-official initiatives for change, the net result is intensified conflict and aggression. In the case of Israel's false flag terror campaign inside Libya against Gaddafi, for example, which was operated for over 25 years his regime's response and reaction included support to formerly very anti-Gaddafi organizations including Hamas and Hezbollah, due to the common Israeli enemy being identified.
Historical explanations of why state and security service conspiracies, plots and false flag operations are so widespread and long-standing in western society can draw on the theories of historians such as Mircea Eliade and Eric Hobsbawm. Both indicate the period of about 1750-1775 as a turning point for western society featuring the belief that society had “transcended history” and would go on to found a world system of nation states under Western hegemony. For Eliade, this was the start of western civilization creating a meta history in which it could use any means, any methods to achieve a perfect world. We live with the enduring results including false flag operations, conspiracy plots, terror war and barely concealed disinformation and propaganda.
By Andrew McKillop
Contact: xtran9@gmail.com
Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights
Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012
Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.
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