Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

[sunny]

A heap of shit should roll down on this guy. He needs to be made an example of what we won't tolerate. The "CT community" likes to make so much noise about fighting for our constitutional rights by seeking the truth, now it's time for proactive strategies. An internet firestorm should be ignited forthwith, for starters.

REPOST THIS OP EVERYWHERE.

[DoYouEverWonder]

A heap of shit should roll down on this guy. He needs to be made an example of what we won't tolerate. The "CT community" likes to make so much noise about fighting for our constitutional rights by seeking the truth, now it's time for proactive strategies. An internet firestorm should be ignited forthwith, for starters.

REPOST THIS OP EVERYWHERE.

CASS R. SUNSTEIN



ADRIAN VERMEULE

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Spread their pics around too. These guys need to be the poster boys for all internet trolls and disruptors.


Vermeule is some kind of blue blood type. His mommy was a famous prof at Harvard.

Time to go digging in the dirt.

[8bitagent]

Ironic that the WND article omits the part about 9/11:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=121884

Theyve been hard on questioning 9/11, even tho theyve published articles "exposing the federal involvement in WTC 1993 and Oklahoma City 1995", and routinely publish articles about the infiltration by the "Satanic Illuminati".

[Hammer of Los]

Can anyone here tell me what the pay is like?

[DoYouEverWonder]

Can anyone here tell me what the pay is like?

It probably sucks, but you do get to sit home and jack off all day.

[82_28]

So, wouldn't this just add another layer of conspiracy speculation atop another one?

[DrVolin]

This is fantastically dangerous material. I don't even know where to begin.

they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event.

As we all know, powerful people never work together to further their own interests at the expense of the more numerous but less powerful. That's just a conspiracy theory.

A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories... those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a “crippled epistemology,” in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories...

If anything, these statements are even more completely true of coincidence theory. They aren't at all 'distinctive features' of CT.

to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.

Well yes. There would hardly be a need to work hard at undermining the premises of conspiracy theories if they weren't actually factual, and no one would have to worry if the realizations they lead to didn't move people to political action. Note that he doesn't say violent or criminal or even seditious action. He merely says political action.

a conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it is an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role. This account seems to capture the essence of the most prominent and influential conspiracy theories. Consider, for example, the view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy...

and the other prominent, equally crazy assertions that Nixon and his powerful inner circle sought to hide their role in various illegal enterprises, or that the leadership of the cigarette companies sought to hide data about the dangers of smoking, and to hide their role in that activity... Clearly, the powerful never try to act in their own interest and hide their role, and we shouldn't even worry about the possibility.

I really wish I had time to do this line by line.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

8bitagent put up a thread denigrating the 9/11 Truth movement...yet again.

"So Whose Fault Is It "9/11 Truth" Was An Abysmal Failure?"
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26678

[DrVolin]

Admitedly, the Truth Movement is highly denigratable.

[brainpanhandler]

I've posted the entire research paper in the data dump and directed discussion here.

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=26687

It's fascinating reading and remarkably readable for a lawyer/government beaurocrat. The irony of course, that cannot possibly be lost on the authors, is that they are advocating a conspiracy against conspiracy theorists. Oh what tangled webs we weave...

[Jeff]

Wasn't this already a South Park episode?

[brekin]

Jeff wrote:

Wasn't this already a South Park episode?

You know parts of it sound like a South Park episode:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1084585
From page 5

Within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus to potentially
harmful theories. Not all false conspiracy theories are harmful; consider the false
conspiracy theory, held by many of the younger members of our society, that a secret
group of elves, working in a remote location under the leadership of the mysterious
“Santa Claus,” make and distribute presents on Christmas Eve. This theory is false, but is
itself instilled through a widespread conspiracy of the powerful – parents – who conceal
their role in the whole affair. (Consider too the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.) It is
an open question whether most conspiracy theories are equally benign; we will suggest
that some are not benign at all.

[brainpanhandler]

A couple other select quotes:

Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials might undermine such theories, and as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined.

And this:

Conspiracy theories are by no means a strictly domestic phenomenon; they can
easily be found all over the world. Among sober-minded Canadians, a September 2006
poll found that 22 percent believe that “the attacks on the United States on September 11,
2001 had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential
Americans.”5

I did not know canadians were generally considered "sober-minded".

[jingofever]

Glenn Greenwald highlights this paragraph:

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses:

(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
(3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.
(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.
(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.

Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

So theorize while it is still legal or you can at least afford it.

[barracuda]

(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.