Suspension of Belief: A Conspiracy Primer

Schismogenesis, Scapegoating, & the Conspiracy Demon

Apr 17, 2024

What follows is a pared down section from 16 Maps of Hell that originally appeared in the “Psychological Operatives in Hollywood” series at Auticulture.com. I tried to place it at a few sites (Off Guardian, 1176, and most recently Ron Unz), to no avail, and since Substack has brought quite a few new readers, I am placing it here instead, while I work on a longer piece, about Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who and the centuries-burning Question of a “Jewish Conspiracy.”

What Some Call Conspiracy

The Oxford dictionary defines the word conspiracy as: “A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” Widely speaking, the three main ingredients of conspiracy are collectivity, criminality, and secrecy. Of these three, only the first can be considered absolute because both criminality and secrecy are relative terms that depend on your point of view.

This is especially so when the crimes in question cross national borders and hence definitions of what constitutes crime versus what constitutes justified acts of war or espionage. Many acts that are crimes for the rest of us are legally sanctioned under the National Security Act, an idea popularized by (British intelligence agent) Ian Fleming’s 007, with his “license to kill.” (Bond is a killer, but not a criminal.)

It’s been a long time since the word “conspiracy” was simply a neutral descriptor, however. As Floyd Rudmin writes, in “Conspiracy Theory as Naive Deconstructive History”:

The power of this pejorative is that it discounts a theory by attacking the motivations and mental competence of those who advocate the theory. By labeling an explanation of events “conspiracy theory,” evidence and argument are dismissed because they come from a mentally or morally deficient personality, not because they have been shown to be incorrect.1

The most recent guilty association of conspiracy theory is perhaps the most unexpected of all: during the days between 2016 and 2020 (the Donald Trump administration), “conspiracy theories” became linked to state power of the most “deplorable” kind: dangerously right-wing, extremist, antisocial, wing-nut neo-fascists running—and ruining—Western society.

The word conspiracy, coupled with theory, then, is an example of how words are increasingly losing their meaning, while at the same time accruing a disproportionate amount of power.

It even seems as though they may be gaining power as they lose all meaning—quite an Orwellian development in and of itself. (The word “gender” is another example. Or “racist.”)

Conspiracy-Theory-as-Scapegoating

The problem that the serious, honest, and sincere conspiracy investigator faces is that all the premature and poorly executed dot-joining, speculation, wild theorizing of the David Ickes and Alex Jones of the world—and the deliberate disinformation of countless infiltrates within the field—has now severely tainted the data.

Due to an almost instant association with “crazy” narratives being spun around it, even referring to a salient fact may lead to accusations of belief in said narratives, to be quickly followed by smug dismissal—not only of the data being raised, but of the person raising it. To question certain facts about (to give a far from random example) “the Holocaust”—or even to put the word in quotes—can lead almost instantly to accusations of antisemitism, criminal intent, and/or mental imbalance. Bingo, subject dismissed.

All of this may or may not be the result of deliberate design (i.e., conspiracy).

The problem with naïve or premature pattern-recognition (conspiracy theories as opposed to conspiracy facts) is that it prevents us from allowing a pattern to remain a sequence of effects that can be traced to an array of individuals, groups, and agendas, who may or may not be working in cahoots (and may or may not be conscious of what they are doing).

This inevitably concretizes an “other” that: a) can be distinguished from oneself; and b) can be blamed for all of the effects (generally seen as negative and undesirable). This sets up a scapegoat, a “diabolic figure” upon whom all the world’s ills can be blamed.

In my experience, it’s quite common to find people arguing against a “conspiratorial” view of history on ideological grounds. They will argue that scapegoating is a problem, and that any interpretation of the evidence that isolates a single group or agenda as being responsible for the world’s problems must be wrong because it amounts to scapegoating. One simply cannot offer evidence for Jewish interests playing a major role in central banking—and therefore part of an “international conspiracy”—without being “anti-Semitic.”

This comes close to the sort of ideological “reasoning” that’s increasingly prevalent today, such as the argument that, because claiming obesity is bad for one’s health might strengthen a social stigma against fat people, it is no longer a credible argument. Or suggesting a person’s homosexuality could be traced back to childhood trauma is ipso facto homophobic.2 And so on.

By such “reasoning,” conclusions should not be evaluated according to how well they explain the evidence, but how socially, morally, or ideologically “correct” they are. When mathematics becomes “white supremacy,” 2 + 2 must be allowed to = 5, in the interests of equity.

Bridges begin to collapse and planes to fall from the sky soon thereafter.

On the other hand, since there is a natural tendency in human beings to seek out scapegoats, it is wise to apply a degree of caution when approaching evidence for “grand conspiracies,” Jewish or otherwise. People are inclined to want to believe all-too-easy interpretations that offer a single culprit, because it automatically absolves them of complicity with the circumstances they feel trapped inside, and of all responsibility for them.

To this extent, any conspiratorial view of history that adheres to an “us and them” model—i.e., that presents a clear dividing line between supposed conspirators and the rest of humanity—is inherently flawed.

Let’s face it, there isn’t much evidence for a clear or absolute dividing line in any kind of human interactions. This is probably why most extreme “grand conspiracy” theories eventually wind up with either a superhuman or a non-human (or off-planet) element in the driving seat, be it David Icke’s Reptilians, Christianity’s Satan, Islam’s Djinn, or some distant secret space colony run by the Illuminati.

Currently, the only entirely, somewhat identifiable human grouping that consistently gets the rap for the whole damn problem is “the Jews” (with white male “patriarchy” as a strong—and more socially accepted—competitor).

In my own view, there is wisdom (as well as folly) in dismissing the idea of a hidden clique of puppet masters directing history from behind the scenes. This is not because there is no evidence that such cliques exist, however (there is plenty), but because they exist not so much as causal agents but as more deeply concealed effects. They are carriers of a “conspiracy”—a spiritual, psychological, cultural, social, and political hegemony—that goes back millennia.

At any given time, such cliques may be the possessors of unknown power and influence; but if so, it is only because they are also possessed by it.

In “Agency Panic” (Conspiracy Nation), Timothy Melley writes of Vance Packard’s (and J. Edgar Hoover’s) “structural paranoia”3:

the very idea of manipulation, in the sense of a willful attempt to control others, becomes obsolete, since attempts at manipulation are themselves only products of previous manipulation. In Packard’s world, the system of depth manipulation is self-regulating. Control has been transferred from human agents to larger agencies, institutions, or corporate structures. . . . Packard and Hoover both attempt to describe a structural form of causality while simultaneously retaining the idea of a malevolent, centralized, and intentional program of mass control. This odd conjunction of the intentional and the structural is the essence of agency panic, the motive force of postwar conspiracy culture (Conspiracy Nation, p. 77).

By this understanding, any hypothetically controlling individuals, groups, or agendas are only effective to the extent that:

a) They are themselves possessed

b) They are able to possess the rest of us

By passing on (transmitting) their “demons” (ideologies and methodologies) mimetically, they ensure we will embody, implement, and extend them into the world, via our own thoughts, beliefs, words and actions.

Maddeningly, such thoughts and beliefs also include belief in an international conspiracy; ergo, it is in the interests of such an overarching agenda to propagate a (controlled version of) belief in its own existence, as well as concealing itself.

This is integral to the “divide and conquer” methods of schismogenesis.

Gregory Bateson’s Complementary Schismogenesis

Schismogenesis is a term derived from the Greek words skhisma “cleft” (borrowed into English as schism, “division into opposing factions”), and genesis, “generation, creation.” The creation of a divide. Anthropologist and intelligence operative Gregory Bateson developed the concept while working for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA), and coined the term to describe “progressive differentiation between social groups or individuals.”

[I]f two groups exhibit symmetrical behavior patterns towards each other that are different from the patterns they exhibit within their respective groups, they can set up a feedback, or “vicious cycle” relation. For example, if boasting is the way they deal with the other group, and if the other group replies to boasting with more boasting, then each group will drive the other into excessive emphasis on the pattern, leading to more extreme rivalry, and ultimately to hostility and the breakdown of the system. . . . Schismogenic behaviors, when put into equations (!) and graphed as curves, are “bounded by phenomena comparable to orgasm.” They reflect conscious or unconscious hopes for release of tension through total involvement.4

Complementary schismogenesis is the term Bateson coined for what happens when people with different cultural norms come into contact: they each react to one another’s differing patterns of behavior with the opposing behavior. This is colloquially known as “doubling down.”

Given two groups or types of people, the interaction between them is such that behavior from one side elicits another behavior from the other side, as exemplified in the dominant-submissive behaviors of a class struggle or a sexual relationship.

Furthermore, the behaviors may exaggerate one another, leading to a severe rift and possibly conflict. (Think “Holocaust denials” vs. “Holocaust affirmations.”) One of the factors said to exacerbate such conflict is “information asymmetries” between the two groups. This is when one party has more or better information than the other, creating an imbalance of power.

Information asymmetry might be seen to exist within each of us. When denied access to the more instinctive common sense and intuitive wisdom of our natural selves (and our ancestors), our socially-conditioned (and heavily propagandized) rational minds are rendered helpless in the face of seemingly irrational acts (which the world is naturally full of).

At the same time, when our more primitive, instinctive awareness is denied the leavening influence of reason and logic, it tends to see patterns and meanings—devilish or divine—in everything. It has no way of deducing that, while we are being manipulated by shadowy forces, part of the manipulation is designed to engender our belief in something that isn’t real, to render us even more susceptible to manipulation.

Hence we have the maddening paradox of a unified conspiracy to engender belief in a unified conspiracy. This is sometimes referred to as “the revelation of the method.”5

Perhaps the most critical feature of conspiracy theorizing in general is the failure to refer to personal, everyday experience and accountability within the agendas of social control being described. The cartographer fails to include his or her own faulty instrumentalities—which are as compromised as everything else—on the map being assembled.

In this case, there is an outward gaze that projects wounded agency onto the systemic malevolence that has caused the wounding. But there is no inward gaze that recognizes how the wounding also causes the systemic malevolence, or malfunctioning. There is the acknowledgment of conspiracy, but no recognition of complicity.

Ironically, this selective blindness is essential to the maintenance of power that rules over us: to remain in the victim position means to refuse to see our complicity with being victimized. By the same token, a recognition of complicity, being also a recognition of responsibility, is the first step towards autonomy, to getting free of the conspiratorial programs of exploitation that oppress us.

The split of complementary schismogenesis—both self- and other-engineered—may be central to maintaining and extending power and control over human psyches, individually and collectively. Divide and conquer: as within, so without.

Our intuitive, pre-rational mind believes in demons, and in the metaphysical aspects of existence, because it has direct experience of something that transcends both our rationality and our physicality. Our conscious, rational mind “knows better,” of course. Its job is to manage the everyday, mundane realm of hard, cold facts. Yet both are effectively useless without a dialogue with the other.

Schismogenesis is the key to maintaining territorial jurisdiction over both sides of this divide. As C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters has it:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight (p. xi).

The Conspiracy Demon depends both on our disbelief and our belief, and it uses whichever modus operandi suits its ends. Yet its only power over us is by installing its “program” inside us.

Ditto with the State.

If the conspiracy believers and the conspiracy debunkers were to get together and compare notes, both sides might come away with a more coherent and comprehensive picture of the world. For the maintenance of the sociocultural hegemony of “the world,” however, it’s paramount that such dialogues, both inner and outer, do not happen.

At an internal and individual level, what seems to be required is, not only to “unsuspend our disbelief”—to cease to submit uncritically to the official, manufactured narratives about history and about reality—but also to suspend belief when it comes to taking on new, counter-narratives, and to refuse the relief they offer from the cognitive dissonance of not knowing what to believe.

Suspension of Belief: A Conspiracy Primer

Schismogenesis, Scapegoating, & the Conspiracy Demon

What Some Call Conspiracy

Conspiracy-Theory-as-Scapegoating

Gregory Bateson’s Complementary Schismogenesis

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