State sponsored conspiraloons ...

[Bernie Gunther]

I was reading an entertaining new blog entry by Adam Curtis about the Security Services:

It is a belief that has been central to much of the journalism about spying and spies over the past fifty years. That the anonymous figures in the intelligence world have a dark omniscience. That they know what's going on in ways that we don't.

It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do.
But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.
It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

... and it struck me that what he's describing are basically various organisations of state-sponsored conspiraloons, only these very special loons are protected from sceptical inquiry by secrecy laws and given powers to impose their mad views on the public in various ways.

 

[elbows]

Missing from the article is the question of whether the timing of that round of 'Russian spies within MI5' stuff that blew up in the 1980's could have been useful to the state. The politics of US nuclear missiles being hosted in the UK certainly made its mark on that part of the 1980's in other ways, and I wonder if the spy stuff was another useful layer in that regard, hyping the Soviet threat.

Anyway its certainly no surprise that that side of MI5 was crap in a number of ways, especially as this is one of the few Adan Curtis blogs I've read where I already knew almost all of the stories. But I caution that his focus is very narrow, and that other aspects of the secret state had real work to do and probably did it quite well at times. e.g. Industrial stuff, MI6 overseas and especially these days the work of intercepting communications for all manner of potential purposes.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Hiring people competent at communications interception or infiltrating protest movements and/or unions on their behalf doesn't rule out having a totally batshit world-view though.

 

[YouSir]

Fair few books on he CIA which confirm their general insanity. Once you're a figure with power in that world there are almost no bars or challenges to whatever delusional shit you choose to believe and promote.

 

[elbows]

Hiring people competent at communications interception or infiltrating protest movements and/or unions on their behalf doesn't rule out having a totally batshit world-view though.

Perhaps the very concept of the state benefits from a range of bat-shit views. To be effective its simply a case of deciding which departments of the state are best served by those with paranoid & highly competitive bents as opposed to those more interested in fostering trust and co-operation.

 

[frogwoman]

I've long thought that this is one "conspiracy theory" worth taking very seriously

 

[likesfish]

When your oppenent was the soviet union which really was batshit, jazz music a threat to the state?
Going mad was a definite risk
Face it most people find the swappies irritating imagine if you had to understand them as part of your job

 

[YouSir]

When your oppenent was the soviet union which really was batshit, jazz music a threat to the state?
Going mad was a definite risk
Face it most people find the swappies irritating imagine if you had to understand them as part of your job

Given that the FBI spent two years trying to figure out the lyrics to 'Louie Louie' I'm not sure sanity was in abundant supply on either side.

 

[barney_pig]

'It is a belief' that simply asserting something and ascribing it to person unknown is a pretty shoddy research method.

 

[butchersapron]

When your oppenent was the soviet union which really was batshit, jazz music a threat to the state?
Going mad was a definite risk
Face it most people find the swappies irritating imagine if you had to understand them as part of your job

Wtf do you think happened to Jazz musicians in the US?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I have a lot of time for Adam Curtis, but I don't know what's new with the general theory here. Of course the state may have reasons to peddle conspiracy theories. See the Iraq war build up just for starters. If spooks didn't dream them up there still might be a need to invent them.