Currently Happening Presently Now: CONSPIRACY

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Husting, G., & Orr, M. (2007). Dangerous machinery:“Conspiracy theorist” as a transpersonal strategy of exclusion. Symbolic Interaction, 30(2), 127-150.

In a culture of fear, we should expect the rise of new mechanisms of social control to deflect distrust, anxiety, and threat. Relying on the analysis of popular and academic texts, we examine one such mechanism, the label conspiracy theory, and explore how it works in public discourse to “go meta” by sidestepping the examination of evidence. Our findings suggest that authors use the conspiracy theorist label as (1) a routinized strategy of exclusion; (2) a reframing mechanism that deflects questions or concerns about power, corruption, and motive; and (3) an attack upon the personhood and competence of the questioner. This label becomes dangerous machinery at the transpersonal levels of media and academic discourse, symbolically stripping the claimant of the status of reasonable interlocutor—often to avoid the need to account for one's own action or speech. We argue that this and similar mechanisms simultaneously control the flow of information and symbolically demobilize certain voices and issues in public discourse.

"False consciousness is defined as the holding of false beliefs that are contrary to one's social interests and which thereby contribute and maintain the disadvantaged position of the self or the group...A consciousness is false when it serves to perpetuate inequality by leading members of a subordinate group to believe they are inferior, deserving of their plight, or incapable of taking action against the causes of their subordination. At the most general level, false consciousness refers to the harbouring of false beliefs that sustain one's own oppression. Specific examples...might include denying that injustice or disadvantage occurs, believing that social change is impossible or undesirable, making false attributions about the causes of political suffering, and adopting the norms of one's oppressor."
-John T. Jost, Negative Illusions: Conceptual clarification and pychological evidence concerning False Consciousness, Political Psychology, vol.16, no.2, 1995, page 400.


 


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