"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." So concluded the twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein at the end of his seminal exploration of the relationship between language, truth, and proof in his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". This quote returned to me as I passed the plaque commemorating Wittgenstein's extended stay at the Ashling Hotel near Heuston Station on my way to attend Jim Corr's recent talk on the economic crisis at the same venue. With the received wisdom on Corr being that he's a fellow traveller of conspiracy theorists like David Icke, who believe that a cabal of assorted financiers, politicians and influential lobbyists have a desire to create and control a single world government, it was thus hardly the most revelatory insight I've ever had when I concluded that there might well be some sort of connection between the words of the great philosopher and those of the evening's speaker.
Having settled on my own somerwhat highfalutin expectation of what the evening would involve I spoke to others in the meeting room about what they hoped to hear. Excluding the slight gender imbalance of more men in attendance than women the crowd itself was a good cross section of Dublin society with prosperous looking gentlemen in round necked navy Hilfiger sweaters and dockers rubbing shoulders with young men in tracksuits and mothers in their fifties with strong Dublin accents. Their opinions on what to expect were similarly varied, ranging from the flippant ("Really, we're just here to find out if there's going to be a Corrs reunion" said one gentleman with his friends who professed himself to be "fairly cynical" about the whole thing) to the slightly worrying (one couple said they were there to hear more about the "reptilian agenda of manipulation and control"). In between such extremes though the default position for most in attendance seemed to be a profound distrust of popular news providers coupled with a desire for answers arising from a sense of shock at Ireland's dramatic collapse from full employment and rapid growth to virtual bankruptcy.
Corr's talk began strongly enough with his focus on September 11 and his feeling that something was amiss with how this story was reported in the mainstream media. Without being an authority on the minefield that is 9/11 conspiracy theories this struck me as an effective departure point for Corr in the sense that reports of inconsistencies between aspects of the official version of the day have been widespread for some time now and the Bush administration's relationship with the truth can, in some instances (Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Iraq's weapons capabilities prior to the invasion), only be described as tenuous at best. By using logic and making easily verifiable claims about what happened Corr began to seem like a slightly more plausible witness and his public persona as a high profile purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories lost some of its lustre. Continuing in the same vein he discusses the 7/7 London bus bombings with the same mixture of elementary logic and verifiable accusations before examing the notion of false flag operations whereby governments attack their own citizens in order to gain greater control over them or implement unpopular measures.
Having thus established in his own mind the obvious untrustiworthiness of our governing figures he then moves onto their intentions. It is at this point that the nagging feeling that Corr can only really effectively sow doubt concerning inconsistencies in the official accounts of high profile catastrophes developes into the realisation that most of his thesis is little more than a slightly sinister hodge-podge of circumstancial arguments and hearsay. Members of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families, Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Kissinger, Illuminati bloodlines (preeminent dynastic clans featuring the likes of the Bushes and the Merovingians), and the Bildeberg group (a low profile gathering of politicians, lobbyists and financiers) are just some of the many individuals and institutions invoked as Corr identifies the participants in a conspiracy aimed at gaining nothing less than total control over the world, its resources and its inhabitants.
This total control is seemingly an end in itself for these shadowy conspirators. Corr explains how sodium fluoride in our water, the sweetener aspartame, vaccines, processed and genetically modified foods, and skin products all conspire to reduce population levels and make their users more docile. Another instrument of control is the top down, engineered, financial crisis currently wreaking havoc on the Irish economy. Corr's analysis argues that central banks are controlled by the elites by who expand and contract the supply of money in order to remove money from the masses. Once the bubble reaches its optimum level these elites exit the stock market, bet on the falling market, withdraw their money from banks (thereby allowing the bigger banks to absorb the smaller) and buy up valuable assets at their depressed prices. In this way these elites profit at every stage in the economic cycle and increase their influence over societies with a view to ultimately assuming control over the sovereignty of invidividual states. Corr argues that Ireland fits into the victim role of this narrative perfectly by exhuming the now familiar statistics surrounding Anglo and the bank bailout in general and by pointing out that Shell is owned by Queen Beatrix and the Rothschilds with the implication seemingly being that this crisis was partially, at least, engineered in order to facilitate Shell in their efforts to exploit Ireland's natural resources.
The economic analysis ended Corr finishes with the bizarre epilogue of a powerpoint presentation featuring various influential figures (the Obamas, the Queen, the Queen, Pope Rattzinger, Dick Cheney and the Bushes) making the horned hand gesture (also known as manu corote or the Satanic Salute apparently). Whether or not Corr really thinks these high profile members of his putative elite are in league with the devil or his (or her) worshippers is, alas, never fully explained. Perhaps it was this more than anything else that contributed to the politely articulated view held by many in the audience that the talk, although interesting and provocative, was a bit unfocused and not very convincing.
As for myself, the talk was largely what I'd expected although I hadn't expected him to seem so plausible at the beginning. From my perspective my intial assumption that the Wittgenstein quote would prove apt seems to have been proven correct: much of Corr's thinking does seem like a reaction to an inability to understand a catastrophe, probably 9/11 in this case. Since there doesn't seem to be any sort of rational way of reconciling atrocities such as occurred on that day with our own subjective everyday experience of human interactions Corr and his fellow conspiracy theorists seem to have responded to it by creating perfect just-so narratives rather than accepting that small groups of people are capable of causing such destruction. (The government's inability to protect its citizens does seem to be curcial here: put simply, had the attacks not occurred then such grand and elaborate conspiracies as Corr presents would not devlop.) Although governments will undoubtedly manipulate emotive events to suit their own purposes, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, this does not mean that they're motivated by a desire to control our lives or to unify us all under the yoke of a single world government. Since we do not have perfect knowledge of the intentions of our leaders we struggle to speak meaningfully about such government manipulation. This does not mean that we should not be suspicious of the motives of our leaders, more that we should just distrust narratives that seem a little too perfect in their conclusions that the whole world is out to persecute us personally. In effect, we should pass over such narratives in silence.
Of course it could be said that I'm refusing to heed my own advice since I can't prove that mysterious elites aren't out to get me. All I can argue with certainty is that I have never met anybody who has been motivated by a desire to control every aspect of another person's life (such psychopathic individuals like totalitarian dictators, Josef Fritzl, etc, seem to be rare), that the horned hand pictures seemed to have been photoshopped and that the conspiracy narrative appears to be completely ignorant of things like the rise of China and India while being strangely sympathetic towards frighteningly oppressive regimes like Russia, Taliban controlled Afghanistan and Iran.
Perhaps Corr's talk and my own response to it is a taste of how things will go in Ireland's new age of austerity as competing factions cling to their view of how society functions and make no meaningful concessions in terms of understanding and engaging with rival views. In this sense Corr can be seen as a part of an emerging group in Ireland that gains an audience by explaining away the shock of the current crisis with crude, narratively satisfying answers. A grim vista made all the more appalling by our ability to see it clearly and easily understand it yet do nothing about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment