Apocalyptic and Paranoid Cultures in Contemporary Setting - Assignment Example

1. Richard Hofstadter’s meaning of “the paranoid style?” with reference to the examples used by Hofstadter and another example. In 1964, Richard Hofstadter published an article entitled ‘The paranoid style in American politics.’ In this article, Hofstadter described what he observed as a sub-cultural characteristic of the American politics and one that was prone to undermining the democracy in the US (Garreau 2006). Hofstadter explains that the paranoid style is mostly about the way ideas are believed as opposed to the truth or falsity of their content. In the article, Hofstadter quotes examples from a Texas newspaper article written in 1855, the 1895 manifesto of the Populist Party and a speech delivered in 1951 by the Senator Joseph McCarthy. If Hofstadter was to write today he would easily add quotes from Karl Rove, Dick C, Rummy and George W. among others. It is astonishing to see from Hofstadters essay just how deep the historical roots of American narrow-mindedness and intolerance really are. He records the campaign against the Illuminati (a subsidiary of the Enlightenment movement), the anti-Masonic rhetoric coming from pulpits all over the US in the 18th century, the Jesuit threat that was popular among paranoids from the 1800s to 1850s and the anti-Catholic sentiments that are connected to the 1893 depression. The approach used is always the same, mixing religious fervour with faux patriotism. The 31st July 1964 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that the John Birch Society hated to see United Air Lines Corporation promote the UN emblem on their airplanes (Hall 2000). The John Birch Society felt that the UN was behind the Soviet Communist conspiracy. In 1835, the inventor of the telegraph who is called S.B.F. Morse stated that a conspiracy existed and the US was being attacked in a vulnerable quarter that could not be defended by armies, ships and forts. Morse was not referring to Islamic terrorists but he was talking about the projects by the Jesuits that were aimed at undermining the American way of life. In the 18th century, the Illuminati were accused of making tea that resulted in abortion. In the 1890s the American Protective Association claimed that there was an international Catholic conspiracy and went so far as to circulate bogus papal encyclicals that gave an ultimatum to all American Catholics to eliminate all heretics. This resembled the Protocols of Zion, a different bogus tract that was used to attack another minority using the same paranoid style. 2. Jameson’s use of, “cognitive mapping,” to a conspiracy theory and how convincing is Jameson’s explanation of conspiracy theories Fig. 1 Algerians looking at blood-stained clothes after six people were murdered by armed attackers in Hattatba village in March 1999 (Halper 2001). Since 1992, over 100,000 lives have been claimed by the civil war ravaging Algeria. Through weekly kidnappings and assassinations, terrorist bombings, village massacres and armed raids, the war has victimized the whole Algerian society. Both the urban elites and the village poor have been affected. As the body count rises, the war is shrouded in a haze of lack of information and uncertainty. The violence has often targeted foreigners and intellectuals. This violence is responsible for driving the international press out of Algeria. In the name of state security, the military government implements strict controls over the local media and routinely suspends and censors private newspapers. Consequently, Algerians at home or abroad have to rely on the dubious and inaccurate official press releases and informal accounts. Given the opacity of information, the increase in violence has generated an increase in conspiracy theories that try to explain the violence. These conspiracy theories point a finger at one or other known agents. As much as the supposed actors in the war - insurgent Islamist forces and the state military - are acknowledged, their true identities and motives are widely questioned. Conspiracy theories circulate across the globe through the internet, list-serves, scholarly journals and word-of-mouth. These conspiracy theories question on who is really behind the killings and the resulting answers are diverse. These answers suggest that the Algerian government itself, the ever-present Central Intelligence Agency, French neo-colonial interests and the global Islamic fundamentalist terrorist network are all responsible. According to Frederic Jameson, when conspiracy theories are viewed from a functionalist perspective in the postmodern age, they represent the poor persons cognitive mapping (Bock 1999). Jameson goes further to state that this is a desperate attempt at representing the late capitalist system by those who have been marginalized. Conspiracy theories are quite ambivalent since they desire final truth but at the same time they question its very possibility. Conspiracy theories also seek ultimate intentionality and agency while at the same time doubting the credibility of others. Conspiracy theories search for knowledge that has not been manipulated while at the same time wondering if its very existence has not been fabricated. Because conspiracy theories lack unmediated knowledge, they attempt to map too much information in a logical narrative master plot or web. According to Paige Baty, this is a cartographic mode of remembering that restores an illusion of control and agency (Cook 2005). Conspiracy theories can be thwarted but earthquakes cannot. Because of this, conspiracy theories should be seen as a socially relevant and absolutely reasonable response to the uncertainties of late modernity. 3. Extent to which narratives of apocalypse and conspiracy are co-dependent with reference to at least one apocalyptic movement Some contemporaries in both Christianity and Islam consider Judaism to be a mortal enemy to their religion. These people are quite prone to cosmic conspiracy theories. The sham called ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ explains that the Jews have a 3000-year-old conspiracy to enslave mankind (Heard 1999). The Protocols are an imaginary and fabricated report of the first Zionist Congress that was held in 1897. The Protocols were first released in the early 20th century. The Protocols claimed to be the minutes of the Elders of Zion who were discussing their covert plan to enslave all mankind. The Protocols were published in 1905 whereby Sergei Nilus, the Russian Orthodox mystic, wrote the preface that sounded an apocalyptic warning about the advent of a Jewish Antichrist and the negative effects of modernity. In 1917, anti-Semites interpreted the Russian revolution as a dramatic proof of the authenticity of the text. The plot had gone into a more open phase whose climax was the Depression. No proofs of the forgery of The Protocols, no matter how telling, were able to silence this text. The Protocols appealed to the apocalyptic fear of a looming global battle between good and evil thereby mobilizing a total response. The Protocols inspired motivation to sacrifice everything to defeat the evil Jewish enemy. The key manipulators of this text all have four characteristics in common. They seek to suppress all dissent, they aim for authoritarian power and resort to violence whenever it suits them. If these manipulators think they can get away with it, they enslave anyone else they can. These manipulators resemble the Jews portrayed in the Protocols. Hitler was hatching precisely these plans as he screamed about the Jewish plots to conquer the world. Since its inception, the Protocols have been the favoured text of the Judeophobes. According to Norman Cohn, the Protocols were the Nazi Warrant for the Genocide (Furnish 2005). After World War II, political elites and Arab intellectuals have been among the Protocol’s most enthusiastic believers. The believers in the Protocols claim that this conspiracy that has been silent for millennia, is now about to burst open. Therefore, the believers in the Protocols believe that they must act ruthlessly against the Jews or they will be destroyed. 4. Importance of visions of ‘Utopia’ for millennial movements and the extent to which these utopias are defined by their historical context Millennial movements believe that the world is flawed and will be destroyed and then replaced with a perfect world. These movements believe that a redeemer will cast down the evil and rise up the dead but righteous people. Millennialism is closely tied to utopianism. Visions of utopia are the millennial impulse with an optimistic eschatological expectation (Jacoby 2005). Visions of utopia lead to the belief that historical trends are certainly leading to a wonderful millennial outcome. One such outcome is the Enlightenment narrative of expected human progress. Visions of utopia are usual among most millennial movements, even when the tribulations are likely to be indeterminately long and severe. The promise of something better for the righteous is far more inspiring than a guaranteed bad end (Jacoby 2005). The Norse Ragnarok is the most depressing religious eschatology at which the earth and the heavens are destroyed, and gods and humans are defeated. Nevertheless, the Norse Ragnarok offers a millennial promise that a new earth and sun will appear, and the few surviving humans and gods with live in peace and prosperity. Visions of utopia of better times have been a comfort to people with sad and hard lives as well as an essential catalyst of political reform and social change. One such example of visions of utopia in history is Moses mobilization of enslaved Jews from Egypt with a promise of a land of milk and honey. Other instances where visions of utopia played a role are the medieval millenarian peasant revolts, the integrationist millennial movement of the African-American civil rights and the Sioux Ghost Dance. Leaders of millennial movements have arisen out of repressive conditions with visions of utopia to preach that they could lead their followers to a new Zion. As was witnessed with the Ghost Dance, every now and then the millennial movements are terribly unsuccessful especially when they rely on supernatural means to achieve their goals. Even in their defeat, sometimes visions of utopia in millennial movements contribute to social reform as they did through the rise of revolutionary socialism from the medieval peasant revolts. Movements for social change were more successful when they focused on temporal and not millennial movements, where goals were achieved through human rather than supernatural means. However, the expectations of visions of utopia helped in motivating participants to take risks against huge odds. 5. A demonstration of at least one ‘apocalyptic group’ and the relationship between that group and its social and cultural context The Kahal is a Jewish communal organization which suggests that organized Jews were indeed conspiring against the Gentiles. Internal documents of the Kahal revealed that the group followed the Talmudic belief that Gentile property was free-for-all and for a fee, Jews were pre-authorized by the town council to finagle it. The Kahal is clearly a source of anti-Semitism and it can also explain the exact predatory nature of Communism behind window dressing (Jacoby 2005). For example, Brafmann explains how a Jew buys the rights to a Gentiles house. The Jew acquires the right of ownership of the gentile’s house in force and he is given the exclusive right to get possession of the said house with guarantee that there will be no interference or competition from other Jews. Until the Jew has finally transferred the house to his official possession, he is the only one entitled to rent that house or trade in it. The Jew can also lend money to the gentile who owns the house or to other gentiles who may dwell in it with the intention of making profits out of them (Jacoby 2005). The Bolshevik Revolution, a front for the Illuminati Jewish bankers, brutally destroyed the Christian Russian civilization. The most important aspects of this revolution were the imposition of a depraved and ghastly police state and the slaughter of millions of non-Jews and the confiscation of vast Gentile wealth. This holocaust did not get much notice because Illuminati Jews controlled the education system and mass media using highly-paid dupes and self-righteous of the neo-con, liberal, feminist, socialist and Marxist stripe to enforce the intellectual tyranny. Furthermore, Illuminati Jewish bankers took possession of the Russian industry. Instructions were given by German Secret Service documents to the Bolsheviks to destroy the Russian capitalists as far as they pleased, but not permit the destruction of Russian enterprises in any way (Mason 2002). 6. Millennial beliefs are often associated with marginalized groups – the extent to which millennialism can be understood as a generalized theme in contemporary culture The American evangelical Christianity shows a manifestation of millennialism in contemporary society. For American evangelicals, beliefs about God’s creation of the earth, God’s end of the earth and a millennial eschatology that is based on Jesus’ return to earth are all common. The role of marginalized groups becomes obvious as one looks closely at the appeal of fundamentalist sub-subculture of the late twentieth century to establish why people might be attracted to it. Through an involvement with this culture one receives an intense exposure to the millennial beliefs. Early practice and rhetoric has shown the presence of contradictory and ambiguous marginalized groups’ impulses from the start. In the early 20th century, condemnation of liberalizing practices by marginalized groups was a main rhetorical trope used by fundamentalist preachers. Fundamentalist preachers who used inexpensive tracts and pulpits used ribald pictures of flappers as a social sanctioning device aimed at prodding people into becoming fundamentalists. In the early years of fundamentalism, women were offered more opportunities in institutions than they could get in the wider society. However, the mid 20th century saw the erosion of most of this ambiguity (Mason 2002). The Christian fundamentalist organizations stopped being a source of ambiguous employment opportunities for women. The reasons behind this were partly based on the fact that the wider society had liberalized itself in that it provided jobs that were made available to women. Another reason was because of the increasingly restrictive nature of fundamentalist organizations. Most of the opportunities that these organisations had in early years were no longer extended to women. Provoking American Christian millennial beliefs of the 20th century reveals that it was particularly antifeminist. It is impossible for marginalized groups to free themselves from gendered stereotypes because it gives no foundation on which to name stereotypes. When the hierarchical import of one story is maintained, the stories of the experiences of individual people are trivialized and marginalized. This is a classic move made by patriarchal social structures. The film ‘The Rapture’ makes all this graphically evident because of the anti-individual and anti-political aspects of the contemporary Christian millennial beliefs that are starkly portrayed. When Sharon begins to be bodily assumed into heaven or raptured at the end of time, she does not let go of her own story which contains the fact that she shot and killed her daughter. Sharon did this as obedience to measures that she had been taught to believe were signs of divine command. At the conclusion of the film, Sharon is left standing outside of Heaven for eternity. No place in the millenarian story exists to let human beings raise the question of theodicy and challenge the ethics of the divine being that is to judge them. Just like all other good patriarchal stories, Christian millennial beliefs are non-participatory, non-dialogical and claim triumphalist meaning and value exclusively for the divine. 7. Barkun describes conspiracy theories as “stigmatized knowledge” - implication of the statement Timothy McVeigh visited Area 51, the test range of the alleged flying-saucer and viewed the film ‘Contact’ while on death row. The phrase, ‘New World Order’ is harmless-looking but it took on a disturbing connotation once the first President Bush uttered it. The acronym FEMA sends chills down the spines of a significant number of Americans. All these facts cannot be dismissed as unrelated coincidences. These facts are all proof of a strange change that emerged in American popular culture in the 1990s. During this time, previously obscure forms of conspiracy theories and esotericisms fused with traditional millennial beliefs and popular pseudo-science were common. Instead of the emergence of a movement, the result was a worldview that threatened to challenge trust in consensus reality and public institutions. Michael Barkun is a political scientist at Syracuse University who describes the implications of contemporary millennial beliefs (Jones 2006). Conspiracy theory literature is vast and hardly a pleasure to read. These conspiracy theories say something about the Hollow Earth, the Men in Black, and the Illuminati itself in manageable dimensions. A dynamic in contemporary conspiracy theories changes regular popular culture into a venue for the spread of ideas that the consensus culture has condemned and dismissed. This stigmatized knowledge exaggerates certain features of the popular mind but also has some applications. The main sources of the conspiracy culture are the tradition of conventional millennialism, conspiracy theories and the belief in the existence and importance of extraterrestrial influences such as Unidentified Flying Objects. Some stigmatized knowledge like astrology and alchemy is just obsolete knowledge that academic establishments no longer take seriously. Some of the stigmatized knowledge is urban legends and folklore. Some of the stigmatized knowledge is political ideas that are no longer dominant in the wide world, but have survived in sects and niches. The stigmatized knowledge is not necessarily worthless. For example, acupuncture has risen from sub-cultural disgrace to the status of a recognized treatment. References Bock, D 1999, Three Views on the millennium and beyond. premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, Zondervan. Cook, D 2005, Contemporary Muslim apocalyptic literature, Syracuse University Press. Furnish, T 2005, Holiest wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden, Praeger. Garreau, J 2006, Radical evolution: The promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies-and what it means to be human, Broadway. Hall, JR 2000, Apocalypse observed: Religious movements and violence in North America, Europe, and Japan, Routledge. Halpern, P 2001, Countdown to apocalypse: A scientific exploration of the end of the world, Basic Books. Heard, A 1999, Apocalypse pretty soon: Travels in end-time America, W. W. Norton & Company. Jacoby, R 2005, Picture imperfect: Utopian thought for an anti-utopian age, Columbia University Press. Jones, S 2006, Against technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism, Routledge. Mason, C 2002, Killing for life: The apocalyptic narrative of pro-life politics, Cornell University Press. Read More