Rational thinking versus conspiracy theories

I am writing an article I’d rather not write but feel compelled to do so. Amidst all the horror of Israel’s massacres and desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza in response to Hamas’ terror attack inside Israel, yet another conspiracy theory seems to have taken root among some people. Specifically, that Hamas’ attack was an “inside job.”

Shades of the 9-11 “truther” movement. The conspiracy theory here is that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency could not possibly have been unaware of what Hamas was plotting and either knew the attack was coming and intentionally let it happen or — this is the most common version that has been circulating by conspiracy theorists — Israelis carried out the attack themselves using Hamas as a cover because the Palestinian organization is an Israeli front group.

This conspiracy theory rests on two presumptions: That Mossad agents are supermen, incapable of not being the masters of any situation, and that Palestinians lack agency; that is, Palestinians are incapable of the organization necessary to pull off something on the scale of the October 7 attack. Could either of these presumptions be true? Surely not. Mossad, however lethally capable it may be as an institution, is staffed by human beings. The idea that not a leaf moves in the Middle East without Mossad being behind it is an extension of the idea some on the Left have that not a leaf moves anywhere in the world without the Central Intelligence Agency being behind it, such as the women’s uprising in Iran to pick just one example (to that we will return).

Mossad undoubtedly has a big budget, even if not as huge as that of the CIA, and a big budget provides the resources to do much damage. But no budget, no matter how big, guarantees omnipresence. The Hamas attack had to have been planned for many months, or maybe a couple of years. Those who believe that the October 7 attack was an Israeli “inside job” argue that Israel has agents who spy on Palestinians and soldiers guarding the fence; Mossad and the Israel Defense Force had to have known what being plotted (or used Hamas as its agents) and/or seen militants moving toward the border fence. The underlying idea here is that the terror attack gave Israel the excuse it wanted to bombard Gaza and drive Palestinians out of the enclave, and that Israeli officials had no problem seeing a thousand of their people die to achieve this political goal.

^{“A game of Illuminati” (photo by Miserlou)}

It is certainly true that Israeli officials, and plenty of Israeli citizens, not only fundamentalist West Bank settlers, are completely indifferent to Palestinian lives and well-being and are enthusiastic adherents of ethnic cleansing. The decades of Israeli apartheid speak to that clearly, imposed through draconian laws such as “Jews only” roads, streets on which Palestinians are banned even from walking (even if their home is on it), regular demolitions of homes and Palestinians being allotted as little as one-tenth the water that Jewish settlers use. But it does not follow that a similar depraved indifference to human life is equally applied to Israeli Jews. If Israeli officials really did sacrifice a thousand Jews to provide cover for a massacre, somebody would talk and that would be the end of the career of whomever was behind it, or likely imprisonment. A maneuver with that level of cynicism seems much too big of a risk, politically. 

But the real issue is of Palestinian capability. Again, Palestinians have to be incapable of organization if it is “impossible” for Hamas, or any other Palestinian organization, to have pulled off the October 7 attack. A sophisticated attack against their oppressor is beyond their abilities. Or intellect? This is going dangerously down a slippery slope of racism. However we judge October 7, there can be no conclusion other than Palestinians organized by Hamas are responsible and that Israel, despite all its technological advantages, was caught by surprise.

A New York Times report published on October 10 provided a comprehensive account of how Hamas was able to surprise Israeli military, intelligence and security agencies. Drones were used to disable cellular communications stations and surveillance towers along the border and to destroy remote-controlled machine guns. The Times report, citing Israeli sources, said there were failures to monitor Palestinian communications and “overreliance on border surveillance equipment that was easily shut down by attackers.” Hamas apparently also did all organizing without use of any electronic communications to evade Israeli notice. Electronic communications were used with misdirection in mind: “Hamas operatives who talked to one another also gave the sense that they sought to avoid another war with Israel so soon after a damaging two-week conflict in May 2021,” the Times reported.

Liars do lie but have no need to lie all the time

The corporate media lies, many readers will reply. Yes, the corporate media lies routinely, sometimes essentially all the time on a particular topic, such as Venezuela. But that doesn’t mean the corporate media lies all the time on every subject; that would be impossible and disregards the fact that corporate media outlets are perfectly fine with telling the truth when it suits their narrative. That newspapers print lies and the television broadcasts lies does not absolve us of the responsibility to think and analyze. Saying “I never believe anything I read in the media” is exactly the same as someone who says “I believe everything I read in the media.” Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz — where a reader can find more criticism of Israel than in mainstream U.S. newspapers — also reported on Hamas’ use of drones. So it would seem that Palestinians are capable of organizing.

The lack of agency on the part of an Arab nation parallels the conspiracy-theory narrative that the September 11, 2001, terror attacks were an “inside job” on the part of the Bush II/Cheney administration, assisted by Mossad. The 9-11 “truther” movement is one riddled by anti-Semitism; it is not out of the question that similar anti-Semitic manifestations may arise around Hamas’ October 7 attack. It is of course completely reasonable to question the official government narrative of 9-11. Why the Air Force took so long to scramble planes from the Andrews Air Force base outside Washington is only one question that has never been satisfactorily addressed. Scientific inquiries into the physical properties of the World Trade Center materials that were destroyed is another reasonable avenue of research.

The “truther” narrative, for many, however, consists of assertions without proof that 9-11 was an inside job because the U.S. government does evil things. The U.S. government is responsible for a vast array of horrific actions and the Bush II/Cheney administration was even more inclined than the average White House administration to destroy human life for the sake of advancing geopolitical goals and enhancing corporate profits. But that does not mean that every evil thing that happens in the world is due to the White House. It is not as if Arabs don’t have plenty of reasons to hate U.S. foreign policy, and that a few of them, lacking a political or moral compass, would lash out in a spasm of violence on a symbol of commerce, killing thousands in the World Trade Center who had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy. (Not dissimilar to the Hamas spasm of violence being directed against young people at a rave who had nothing to do with Israeli government policy.)

^{Gaza City after a 2009 bombing (photo by Al Jazeera English via Wikimedia Commons)}

Many a “truther” (including some I personally know) repeat the preposterous argument that (depending on the version) two, or five, Mossad agents were “jumping up and down with joy” as the World Trade Center towers came down. This, sadly, seems to be widely believed among “truthers.” Were these agents the same ones who called 2,000 Jews the night before to tell them not to go to work? What a busy day. Maybe the conversation went like this: “Yitzhak, Shlomo here. The family is fine, thank you. Listen, Yitzhak, I can’t stay on the phone; I’ve got another 500 to call tonight, but please stay home tomorrow because we’re taking out the towers. Oy, I better get time and a half for all these hours.”

Did the Mossad agents identify themselves to onlookers? Were they wearing Mossad name tags? (Maybe the tag read, “Hi, my name is Shlomo. I’m a Mossad assassin. How can I help you?”) Can anybody imagine one of the most professional (and thus deadly) spy agencies on Earth being so ham-fisted and obvious? No. Why would such a preposterous story gain traction for even a second? Because of belief, even if held unconsciously, that Jews constitute some sort of cabal, and when that arises on the Left it is among those who are unable to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.

I suppose that is not completely separable from a belief that because the U.S. government, or the Bush II/Cheney administration (take your pick), is capable of evil acts, all evil acts are done by them and thus 9/11 has to be an “inside job.” This is reductionist thinking. The irony of inside-job belief is that it actually lets U.S. foreign policy off the hook! Maybe people in the Middle East really are pissed off about the oppression they’ve endured thanks to U.S. imperialism. Maybe Palestinians really are pissed off about the oppression they endure at the hands of Israel.

Perhaps Iranian women have reasons to revolt

One more troubling example of conspiracy theory thinking on the Left is the idea floated by some that there is no resistance in Iran to the murderous religious fundamentalist government in Tehran and its misogynistic oppression. It’s really the CIA stirring up trouble. And thus Iranian women have no agency and are incapable of seeing their oppression or acting upon it. That’s sexist thinking.

Women in Iran are subject to draconian laws forcing them to wear hijabs under punitive laws backed by state and vigilante violence and which subject them to prohibitions on accessing public institutions, including hospitals, schools, government offices and airports. One-sided Iranian laws heavily favor men in marriage and divorce. Women also face systematic discrimination in the workplace. “Under the Islamic Republic, physical violence against women starts in the home and extends into the society,” writes Haleh Esfandiari on the Middle East Women’s Initiative’s Enheduanna blog. Pardis Mahdavi, writing for Ms. magazine, notes that Iranian laws set a woman’s worth as half that of a man; women are prohibited from working, obtaining a passport or traveling outside of Iran without her husband’s consent (or her father’s consent if she is single); and polygamy is permitted for men.

So it would seem that Iranian women might have something to complain about. And the uprising of women began after the murder of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini at the hands of Iran’s “morality” police on September 16 while in custody. A Kurdish-Iranian woman murdered by the state because her hair was showing. Rather disproportionate, yes? But “it’s their culture,” apologists for Iranian fundamentalism assert. In reality, it took massive, systematic violence backed by the state, and a violent crushing of the Iranian Left, to impose Iran’s misogynistic laws against the will of women. Of course Left apologists for Iran would not stand for such laws in their own country. Human rights are called that because they belong to all humans, not only selected ones in selected countries. Are Iranian women human or not? Are Iranian women capable of agency or not?

^{YPJ fighter helping maintain a position against Islamic State (photo by BijiKurdistan)}

Reductionist thinking that all governments that are enemies of the U.S. government must be defended as the embodiment of goodness and that nothing could possibly be wrong with countries like Iran is easy. Conspiracy theories are popular with some people because latching on to an all-purpose narrative, or doing nothing more than switching the labels of “good” or “evil” that U.S. governments and the media apply, relieves the believer of having to analyze or study. It is not impossible to oppose a repressive government and sanctions against said country at the same time.

When right-wingers denigrate popular uprisings in countries that are aligned with the U.S., no matter how oppressive, as communist plots because people ground into dust by U.S.-backed dictatorships couldn’t possibly have a reason to complain, we laugh. As we should. That completely robs peoples in subaltern countries of all agency and whitewashes U.S. atrocities. When some folks on the Left declare that people staging uprisings in U.S.-targeted countries, no matter how oppressive, couldn’t possibly have a reason to complain, it is a mirror image of those right-wingers and just as ridiculous. And in the case of denying Iranian women agency, it is sexist as well.

Neither the CIA or Mossad are agencies staffed by supermen. And the Bush II/Cheney administration was the most incompetent in U.S. history until the Trump gang set up shop in the White House. Pulling off 9-11 as an “inside job” would have been a conspiracy involving hundreds of people masterfully pulling off a heavily detailed job without anyone talking, even two decades later. A thoroughly incompetent administration, full of blustering ideologues, did that? We should laugh at the idea. And that brings us to the final example of conspiracy thinking: That Covid-19 is a hoax. That one is bound up with anti-vaccine sentiments, and although there are some people who took Covid-19 seriously and took precautions but were afraid to take the vaccine, Covid deniers frequently are anti-vaxxers.

Could millions be involved without talking?

If we were to believe this one, Covid is harmless or kills only older people (that would be OK?), the vaccine doesn’t work and the vaccine has killed more people than Covid. Here, the conspiracy theory is particularly absurd. For such a vast conspiracy to have taken root, it would have required hundreds of thousands, or more likely millions, of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, hospital administrators and other medical-industry employees to be in on the conspiracy, across almost every country on Earth, spanning almost all cultures, and not one of these millions of people has ever spilled the beans. Seven million deaths, recorded in every country on Earth, would have had to have been faked or falsely classified with nobody talking. Is this not ridiculous? I had three friends die from Covid in the first months of the pandemic; perhaps they were in on the conspiracy as well.

On top of all that, vaccines used to inoculate against Covid would have to be faked and the supposed deaths from them suppressed, again with health care workers everywhere in on the conspiracy, along with all employees in any company involved in the vaccines. Big Pharma sometimes makes bad products, so therefore the Covid vaccines must be bad. Again, reductionist thinking. Big Pharma does indeed sometimes profit off bad products that hurt people. That is true. But is Big Pharma some sort of evil machine determined to harm people or is it a group of top-down capitalist enterprises determined to profit to the greatest extent possible? Obviously, the second of these two choices represents reality.

Let’s think about it rationally. Big Pharma wants big profits, and gets them. Pharmaceuticals constitute one of the highest-profit industries; its wildly over-priced medications and medical devices can be a license to print money, one of the most important reasons that the U.S. has by far the world’s highest health care costs. Health care in the U.S. is designed to deliver corporate profits, not health care. The first companies to successfully produce an effective vaccine against Covid-19 that is reasonably safe would make unprecedented profits, especially with the vast sums of government money thrown at them. The entire world would be watching, so this is one time that Big Pharma would not be able to get away with producing bad products. 

Thus, if we use logic and a basic understanding of how capitalism operates, the pandemic was a golden opportunity for Big Pharma to earn record profits at the expense of governments. And profit they have. Moderna, which had never produced a product before its Covid vaccine, has minted multiple billionaires. That wealth was created thanks to an estimated $2.5 billion of government subsidies, and Moderna’s thanks was to refuse to share the drug’s rights with the government that subsidized it.

One does not have to be a vaccine cheerleader to see all this. I am not; skepticism is often warranted and I personally am usually reluctant to take a vaccine and have seldom done so. But blanket condemnations are useless; in this as all other matters a case-by-case assessment of the particular circumstances should be made. For example, I am of the opinion that eliminating polio and smallpox were welcome developments. Vaccines eliminated those scourges. Vaccines against Covid-19, although certainly not perfect, did get the pandemic under control. That was accomplished through unconscionable profiteering — better that we aim our fire at real outrages rather than conspiracy theories. Better we drop the conspiracy theories when it comes to geopolitical topics and instead analyze, however much more difficult analyzing is than to fall back on ready-made ideas that purport to explain everything in simplistic narratives.