Fusion paranoia--A new twist in conspiracy theories

Jerusalem Post ^ | 1-14-04 | DANIEL PIPES

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[risk]

It's basically an attack on beliefs in the viability of western culture and especially America's constitutional form of government. If you buy into any of this, you might as well kiss any hope for democracy, justice, and any semblance of civilization goodbye.

[ClearCase_guy]

The world has seen other periods in which Magic and Mystery Cults flourish. It does not auger well for any society which moves in that direction.

[veronica]

No doubt the internet has added to this conspracy madness. There is more nutball crap on the internet than you can shake a stick at.

[Durus]

(Silly pet peeve alert, feel free to ignore)

"Such themes enjoy enormous popularity (a year 2000 poll found 43 percent of Americans believing in UFOs), but carry no political agenda."

UFO's = Unidentified flying objects.

Are there objects that are flying that haven't been identified? Of course. Might they have been identified if someone with the proper knowledge had seen the flying object? Of course. However are there such things as unidentified flying objects? Of course...

Hence 57% percent of the people who answered the question are either idiots (thinking that no object, ever flown, remained unidentified) or equates ufo's with little green men from the planet whatever. Hmmm.....that might make them idiots as well.

[TXnMA]

Judaism: a 4500-year-old conspiracy covenant to serve the whims of a master that Jews call "G-d".

Just to set the record (and your apparent anti-Semitism) straight, a conspiracy is hidden collusion. A covenant is a public contract.

(And, no, before you ask, I'm not Jewish...)

Covenant: "an agreement wherein G_d promises a blessing and man asssumes an obligation."

[TXnMA]

To better render your sentence and neutralize your childshly-sneering tone, I should have said,

"Judaism: a 4500-year-oldconspiracy covenant to serve the whims of a master that Jews call "G-d".".

[TXnMA]

...my sarcasm is a secret to you. ;-)

Ah...sarcasm! Yours was, indeed, secret to me. (The inefectiveness of this medium in conveying such intentions is the reason folks invented the < SARCASM > tag.)

If sarcasm was your intent, then, publicly

I apologize for interpreting your remark as anti-Semitic!

However, I stand by my semantic corrections.

[Elric@Melnibone]

Here I thought from the title that this was going to be about nuclear fusion...

By the bye, I believe in UFOs: I have seen things flying which I had no idea what they were. Others might have been able to identify them but I couldn't.

[DTA]

>>>>>>I have seen things flying which I had no idea what they were. Others might have been able to identify them but I couldn't<<<<<

"Flying saucers" stories helped hide American research from the Ruskies prying eyes.

[talleyman]

The world has seen other periods in which Magic and Mystery Cults flourish.

Yeah, every election, when aliens and the dead magically appear to vote for 'Rats everywhere. It's a mystery, all right.

[risk]

Well put. The Dajjal concept is not too far away from the Illuminati/Mason/NWO/lizard conspiricy theory notions. It all comes down to the same thing: being told to give up faith in the enlightenment because "it's all a big hoax" intended to cloak some dark, sinister ambition.

[Dajjal]

What if these disparate elements shared beliefs, joined forces, won a much larger audience, broke out of their intellectual and political ghetto and became capable of challenging the premises of public life in the US?
This is the frightening prospect ....

This is exactly what we are seeing in much of the Muslim world today. Before 1980, imams taught from their pulpits and in their madrassas that the Dajjal would appear some day in the unspecified future and be destroyed by the Mahdi.

Since 1980, more and more have been teaching that the "Signs of Qiyama (the End Times)" are all around us, and have reinterpretted the Dajjal to be not an evil individual, but the political / economic / cultural influences of Western Civilization.

And the Mahdi is being interpretted increasingly not as one great Muslim king, but as the collective violence by all terrorists against any Western person or institution.

A major effort of the War on Terrorism must be to directly counter this apocalyptic thinking and to marginalize these beliefs within the Muslim world.

(Go to my FR homepage for more information.)

[risk]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm making a broad generalization: conspiracy theories (such as Illuminati/Masonic) that undermine the legitimacy of American government and its leadership are similar enough to the Dajjal concept that they can be considered together at least in the sense that an "all powerful" superpower with wicked, secret control would be almost as bad as the Islamic concept of wickedness in the Qiyama.

It's surprising how many people either believe that Mossad committed 9/11 or that while the Islamic extremists are violent and must be stopped, President Bush or Ariel Sharon are worse than Saddam and OBL combined because of their influence on the world stage.

[Dajjal]

You were discussing the corrosive nature of these theories in the West, and I'd generally agree. I was talking about the aggressive and violence-inspiring nature of these theories within the worldwide Muslim culture.

A major difference that I see is that in the West, belief in an Illuminati-type conspiracy tends to encourage political apathy ("what's the use -- the elections are rigged, besides, it doesn't matter because the Rapture will happen any minute now") and / or defensive paranoia ("better stockpile guns and C-rations in the basement for the day THEY try to print a barcode on my forehead").

But in the Muslim world, the belief that the West is collectively the Dajjal inspires aggressive violence ("the imam says that it's the end of the world, there is no future, and I'll be judged as to whether I helped bring about the prophesied victory of Islam over the Dajjal, so I might as well strap on a dynamite belt and walk into that restaurant").

[risk]

I see is that in the West, belief in an Illuminati-type conspiracy tends to encourage political apathy...

I agree! At least one factor ties many of them together: belief that the Jews are manipulating the world to everyone else's deteriment.