Mar
10

HuffPost’s absurd stand on “conspiracy theories” (David Ray Griffin)

From David Ray Griffin:

Mark,

It’s good to have the Huffington Post’s policy on “conspiracy theories” in black and white.

So now someone needs to inform them that they cannot accept any posts that state, or imply, that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, for that is a conspiracy theory.

That has been acknowledged by Cass Sunstein, the Chicago-and-then-Harvard professor of law who was tapped by President Obama to direct OIRA, the executive branch’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (which is under the Office of Management and Budget).

In a 2009 article entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” he and his Harvard co-author wrote:

“The theory that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 is . . . a . . . conspiracy theory.”

(The complete statement is: “The theory that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 is thus a justified and true conspiracy theory.”) See Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 17/2 (June 2009), 202-27, at 208.

In pointing out that there are true as well as false conspiracy theories, Sunstein refers readers to philosopher Charles Pigden, who gave this definition: “”[A] conspiracy theory is simply a theory that posits a conspiracy – a secret plan on the part of some group to influence events by partly secret means.” (Charles Pigden, “Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 219-32, Sect. 2.)

So, in telling us that the 9/11 attacks resulted from a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and 19 members of his al-Qaeda organization, Bush and Cheney clearly articulated a conspiracy theory. They and Sunstein, of course, call it a true theory; but all conspiracy theorists claim that their theories are true.

In any case, the HP did not say that it accepted true conspiracy theories and excluded only false ones (and to do this, they would need to do an enormous amount of research). They said they avoid “lending credibility to any conspiracy theories.”

This means, for example, that they cannot allow President Obama say that we are in Afghanistan to “get the people who attacked us on 9/11,” because he’s thereby endorsing the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory about 9/11.

What the HP policy amounts to is excluding any allegations that our own government has orchestrated any conspiracy. So they would have had to exclude all allegations about Tonkin Gulf being a hoax; ditto about the Watergate break in; ditto for WMD in Iraq (recall “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”?); ditto for the claim that Saddam helped al-Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks; and so on.

One would hope that the people at HP, being reasonable people, will see that they need to rethink their policy. Reading Charles Pigden’s essay would be an excellent place to start.

David Ray Griffin
Santa Barbara, CA


March 10, 2010   //   General   //   35 Comments   //  

4 Comments 3 Comments 9 Tweets 5 Other Comments

35 Comments to “HuffPost’s absurd stand on “conspiracy theories” (David Ray Griffin)”

  • March 10, 2010 at 6:00 pm
    Carolyn Boe says:

    Unless this policy is changed, I will unsubscribe to HP.

  • March 10, 2010 at 6:14 pm
    Mark Crispin Miller says:

    You should tell them, Carolyn.

  • March 10, 2010 at 7:09 pm
    The Progressive Mind » HuffPost’s absurd stand on “conspiracy theories” (David Ray Griffin) « News From Underground says:

    [...] HuffPost’s absurd stand on “conspiracy theories” (David Ray Griffin) [...]

  • March 10, 2010 at 7:11 pm
    davidslesinger says:

    Using the term “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative implies no one in power should be expected to abuse their power.

    Those concerned that “conspiratorial” thinking tempts adherents to have a hard time distinguishing evidence from speculation should just mean evidence needs to be the focus of discussion. Refusal to discuss evidence implies those refusing to open themselves to evidence unwisely are too vulnerable.

  • March 11, 2010 at 2:07 pm
    SovereignMan says:

    But it’s the *official* conspiracy theory. It’s the unofficial conspiracy theories that aren’t allowed.

    This comment was originally posted on Reddit

  • March 11, 2010 at 2:13 pm
    georgewashingtonblog says:

    Official? The Commission’s co-chairs said that [the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new) (free subscription required) 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says ["I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue](http://web.archive.org/web/20070108233707/http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html) 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said ["We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"](http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html) 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that ["There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."](http://salon.com/ent/feature/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/index4.html) And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently [said](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/senior-counsel-to-911-commission-at.html) "At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened". He also [said](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html) "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true." As revealed in the book *The Commission* by respected journalist Philip Shenon, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was [an administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually true](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow). He [wrote an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the process](http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0303outline), controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission’s inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked. See [this article](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Philip_D._Zelikow) and [this article](http://911blogger.com/node/3418).

    This comment was originally posted on Reddit

  • March 11, 2010 at 3:56 pm
    ovigia says:

    That has been acknowledged by Cass Sunstein, the Chicago-and-then-Harvard professor of law who was tapped by President Obama to direct OIRA, the executive branch’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (which is under the Office of Management and Budget).""

    This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed

  • March 11, 2010 at 3:56 pm
    ovigia says:

    That has been acknowledged by Cass Sunstein, the Chicago-and-then-Harvard professor of law who was tapped by President Obama to direct OIRA, the executive branch’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (which is under the Office of Management and Budget).""

    This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed

  • March 11, 2010 at 3:59 pm
    ovigia says:

    "What the HP policy amounts to is excluding any allegations that our own government has orchestrated any conspiracy. So they would have had to exclude all allegations about Tonkin Gulf being a hoax; ditto about the Watergate break in; ditto for WMD in Iraq (recall “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”?); ditto for the claim that Saddam helped al-Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks; and so on."

    This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed

  • March 11, 2010 at 3:59 pm
    ovigia says:

    "What the HP policy amounts to is excluding any allegations that our own government has orchestrated any conspiracy. So they would have had to exclude all allegations about Tonkin Gulf being a hoax; ditto about the Watergate break in; ditto for WMD in Iraq (recall “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”?); ditto for the claim that Saddam helped al-Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks; and so on."

    This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed

  • March 11, 2010 at 6:53 pm
    fitzroy95 says:

    and neither does anyone else, including the authors of the report

    This comment was originally posted on Reddit

  • March 12, 2010 at 5:29 am
    Arthur Goldwag says:

    Let’s not play games with semantics. “Conspiracy Theory” does mean something, and it doesn’t mean–as Conspiracy Theorists disingenuously accuse their debunkers of meaning–that anyone who believes in conspiracies is disreputable or a nut. Of course there have been and always will be conspiracies, many of them carried out by people in governments.

    Most people understand it in the sense that Karl Popper defined “the conspiracy theory of society” in The Open Society and its Enemies (1952), as “the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon…and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.” Popper went on to attribute this way of thinking to “the secularization of…religious superstition.”

    Conspiracy Theory, in other words, is 1) A way of thinking, as opposed to a particular thought; one that presumes causes from their supposed effects; 2) It is a way of thinking that imposes a totalizing, ideologically inflected template on its subject; and 3) One that has more in common with the inductive methods of theology than the deductive methods of science.

    Wearing his theologian’s hat, David Ray Griffin has written about the evils of the notion of American Exceptionalism. 9/11 denial provides him with a counter-narrative with which to attack it.

    “9/11 serves as a revelation of the nature of the American empire—an empire that has been in the making, on a bipartisan basis, for a long time. 9/11 reveals the nature of the values that have underlay this empire-building project for over a century, especially the past 60 years,” he wrote in “9/11, American Empire, and Christian Faith.”(http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/911-american-empire-and-christian-faith/). “We must ask whether the term “evil,” which US leaders have used so freely to describe other nations, must be applied to our own. There can be no doubt about the application of this term to 9/11. We can here quote President Bush himself, who on the evening of 9/11 said: “”Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. . . . Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature.” No explanation of why the attacks were despicable was necessary. The proposition was self-evident. This proposition is even more self-evident, of course, if the attacks were orchestrated by our own government.”

    And again: “As these parallels between Roman and American imperialism show, we can speak of the latter as evil without even bringing 9/11 into the picture. But the awareness that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out to further America’s global domination project, and hence increase global apartheid, helps us, as I have suggested elsewhere, to “fully grasp the extent to which this project is propelled by fanaticism based on a deeply perverted value system.” 9/11 can thereby serve as a wake-up call to Christians in America, forcing us to ask how to respond to the realization that we are citizens of the new Rome.”

    I would venture that Griffin didn’t write his 9/11 books and take to the hustings because he read about nano-thermite or because he timed the buildings’ velocities of collapse or because he noticed a devastating hole in one official account or another. He began with a narrative about the American imperium, then he gathered together whatever forensic evidence he could to support it–evidence that remains so thin, so inconsistent, so circumstantial, that most thoughtful people regard 9/11 Denial as a “conspiracy theory” rather than a conspiracy that is being exposed.

  • March 12, 2010 at 6:06 am
    David Ray Griffin on “Conspiracy Theory” « Arthur Goldwag says:

    [...] here to read the comment in its [...]

  • March 12, 2010 at 7:01 am
    Arthur Goldwag says:

    sorry, I meant to type: the deductive methods of theology rather than the inductive methods of science.

  • March 12, 2010 at 7:00 pm
    davidslesinger says:

    Arthur,

    Everyone has intentions. To focus on Griffin’s intentions and ignore his evidence is beneath you. Your assertion that his evidence is “thin” while neglecting to address suggests we might want to examine your intentions.

    When I put the term “conspiracy theory in its place in an above post, I acknowledged it is reasonable to seek avoidance of speculation.

  • March 12, 2010 at 8:46 pm
    Arthur Goldwag says:

    My comment was about semantics, not evidence, specifically the differences between the pejorative “Conspiracy Theory” and “theories about conspiracies.” Intentionality plays a huge role in Conspiracy Theory so it’s almost impossible to ignore.

    For a cogent set of arguments about the evidence, I’d refer you to John P. Garry III’s comments on the Jesse Ventura post.

  • March 14, 2010 at 9:17 am
    WallyVon says:

    I urge you to read Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s article on Conspiracy Theories. As you read it, ask yourself: what is the difference between the conspiracy theory and the "true story"? How can a principled distinction be made without destroying democracy as we know it?Answer that, and I’ll be impressed.

    This comment was originally posted on Arthur Goldwag

  • March 14, 2010 at 9:17 am
    WallyVon says:

    I urge you to read Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s article on Conspiracy Theories. As you read it, ask yourself: what is the difference between the conspiracy theory and the "true story"? How can a principled distinction be made without destroying democracy as we know it?Answer that, and I’ll be impressed.

    This comment was originally posted on Arthur Goldwag

  • March 14, 2010 at 7:22 pm
    arthurgoldwag says:

    I’ve not only read the piece, I’ve commented on it, here and at the Huffington Post (see "Cass Sunstein’s Secret Police"). I didn’t think much of his proposal.

    This comment was originally posted on Arthur Goldwag

  • March 14, 2010 at 7:22 pm
    arthurgoldwag says:

    I’ve not only read the piece, I’ve commented on it, here and at the Huffington Post (see "Cass Sunstein’s Secret Police"). I didn’t think much of his proposal.

    This comment was originally posted on Arthur Goldwag

  • July 6, 2010 at 2:31 pm
    Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles? by David Ray Griffin « Dandelion Salad says:

    [...] 138 “HuffPost’s Absurd Stand on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (David Ray Griffin),” News from the Underground, March 11, 2010 (http://markcrispinmiller.com/2010/03/huffposts-absurd-stand-on-conspiracy-theories-david-ray-griffin). [...]

  • July 8, 2010 at 7:01 am
    Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles? « Dr Nasir Khan says:

    [...] 138 “HuffPost’s Absurd Stand on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (David Ray Griffin),” News from the Underground, March 11, 2010 (http://markcrispinmiller.com/2010/03/huffposts-absurd-stand-on-conspiracy-theories-david-ray-griffin). [...]

  • July 9, 2010 at 8:49 am
    Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles? « London Truth Action says:

    [...] 138 “HuffPost’s Absurd Stand on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (David Ray Griffin),” News from the Underground, March 11, 2010 (http://markcrispinmiller.com/2010/03/huffposts-absurd-stand-on-conspiracy-theories-david-ray-griffin). [...]

  • July 10, 2010 at 11:44 pm
    London Truth Action says:

    [...] 138 “HuffPost’s Absurd Stand on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (David Ray Griffin),” News from the Underground, March 11, 2010 (http://markcrispinmiller.com/2010/03/huffposts-absurd-stand-on-conspiracy-theories-david-ray-griffin). [...]

  • July 16, 2010 at 5:59 pm
    Deadening The “Conspiracy Theory” Charge… « Back Towards The Locus says:

    [...] I must be careful. Arthur Goldwag argues that “conspiracy theorists…disingenuously accuse their debunkers” of using the term to [...]

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