Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World

Sources and Politics

Matthew Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415575195
• eBook ISBN: 9781136967504
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Conspiracy theories, while not unique to the Middle East, are a salient feature of the political discourses of the region. Strongly reflecting and impacting on state-society relations and indigenous impressions of the world beyond the region, they affect how political behaviour within and among the states of the region is situated, structured, and controlled.

Discounting the common pathological explanation for conspiracism, the author argues that a complex mix of political factors account for most conspiracy theories in the contemporary Arab world. The author argues that the region's modern history, genuine conspiracies, the complex and oftentimes strained relationship between state and society, the role of the state and the mass media as conspiracy theorists, and the impacts of new technologies have all helped to develop and sustain conspiracist narratives. Drawing on a range of examples and cases, including the impacts of globalization, economic reform, weak state legitimacy, the war in Iraq, the Arab-Israeli issue, the rise of political Islamism, and internet and satellite television, the book illuminates the complex sources of conspiracy theories.

Providing a comprehensive overview of this controversial topic, this book will appeal not only to students and scholars interested in Middle East studies, political science, globalization and conspiracy theories, but to anyone seeking an understanding of the region's complex economic, social, and cultural dynamics.

1
Introduction

As a spectacular and defining occurrence, there was always going to be differing interpretations and explanations for the events of 11 September 2001. However, within a remarkably short time after the terrorist attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers a wealth of conspiracy theories emerged – in the Arab world but also elsewhere, including, and in fact especially, in the United States itself – offering counter-discourses on the events and purporting to explain the role of a heretofore unknown or opaque actor in the attacks or in other mysterious events linked to them. One of the first conspiracy theories from the Arab world appears to have come from Al-Manar, the television station of Lebanese Hizballah, which alleged on 17 September 2001 that some 4,000 Jews (presumably meaning people of Jewish descent) did not attend work on the morning of 11 September, presumably because they had some advance warning of the terrorist attacks.¹ The report was subsequently picked up by a variety of media outlets, in the Middle East and around the world, as well as being informally distributed by email and word-of-mouth.

Other similar conspiracy theories emerged almost as quickly; some appear to be sheer fantasy, and others based on snippets of evidence extrapolated into conclusions drawn from false logic. There is the assertion – still commonly made at the street level in the Arab world – that there were no Israeli victims of the 11 September attacks. In fact, five Israeli nationals were killed,² which is approximately proportional to the percentage of people in New York at the time who held Israeli nationality,³ and roughly 400–500 people of Jewish descent, equalling as many as one-sixth of all victims, were killed in the attacks that day.

With the exception of the most extreme conspiracists, however, conspiracy theories do not operate in a vacuum, and they often draw upon some facts or truths as the foundation for the more wild claims that ultimately emerge. The number of Israeli casualties in the 11 September attacks was initially suggested as being much higher than five. In President George W. Bush’s speech to a joint session of Congress on 20 September 2001 he claimed that ‘more than 130 Israelis’ had perished in the attacks.⁴ Also suspicious was the detention of five Israelis on the day of the attacks, who were arrested for ‘puzzling behaviour’ including reportedly filming the World Trade Center after the aircraft had struck it.⁵ The five were ultimately released, but some aspects of their behaviour and the circumstances surrounding the event remain points of conjecture or contestation, with rumours that at least one of them had links to the Israeli military or intelligence services and with some other details remaining unavailable. Conspiracist discourse by some media in the Arab world also argued that Israel was linked directly to 11 September, with its external intelligence agency Mossad featuring prominently in many such conspiracy theories.⁶

Facts such as these are frequently a foundation upon which a wider or more expansive conspiracy theory is developed; a factual error such as that in Bush’s 20 September speech is proffered as evidence of a weak link in the conspiracy being explained, or an undisputed fact – including a suspicious one, in the case of the five Israelis arrested filming the attacks – is extrapolated as evidence of a hidden motive by an unclear actor. Conspiracy theories go as far as to argue that the events of 11 September in their entirety were a conspiracy; a deliberate attempt to discredit the image of Islam in the rest of the world.⁷

The significance of conspiracism in the Arab world

The examples provided above are cases of conspiracy theorizing emerging from the Arab Middle East, but conspiracy theorizing is in no way a unique phenomenon to the region. Conspiracy theorizing discourses feature prominently in other parts of the world, not least the US, which has developed its own long set of conspiracist explanations for the events of 11 September. Debate in the US online and, to a lesser extent, in the mass media, contain rich conspiracist ideas: that it was a missile rather than American Airlines Flight 77 which hit the Pentagon that day,⁸ that there was a missile visible on the undercarriage of one of the aircraft that hit the World Trade Center,⁹ that the identity of the hijackers has been deliberately mistaken.¹⁰ The list goes on. Beyond the specific events of 11 September, there has been a growing body of academic literature on conspiracy theories in the United States, especially since the publication of Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics¹¹ and now covering not just the conspiracist rants of the most marginalized individuals or groups, but also the preponderance of wider, if also milder, conspiracist discourses and conspiracist entertainment, from television shows such as The X-Files¹² to the growth of conspiracy as an explanation for social and political trends and events in the US.¹³ Academic study of conspiracy theories has also shifted and broadened in focus, moving from Hofstadter’s group-psychoanalytical emphasis to encompass other fields of inquiry such as sociology, anthropology and political science. In the US, study of it has become a cross-disciplinary phenomenon of growing interest and importance, and is crucial to understanding US political culture.

Conspiracy theorizing and conspiracy theories, therefore, are not a uniquely Middle Eastern characteristic, and this book makes no claim that there is a Middle Eastern or Arab ‘exceptionalism’ in the use of conspiracy theories. Yet to anyone who has spent time in the region, conspiracy theories clearly are a feature of political discourse, and other sources such as the speeches of Osama bin Laden are peppered with conspiracist language and the assumptions that underlie conspiracism.¹⁴ There is no way to conclusively and objectively measure the tempo of conspiracism in the Arab world, but that it is common should be beyond question. That said, this book seeks to discredit the reductionist, often Orientalist explanations for conspiracism in the region, especially the view that would argue for pathological explanations of conspiracy theories and their frequency in the Arab world. Instead, the aim is to analyse and understand it through the tools of political science, and to explain the sources and structures of conspiracy theories from that perspective. The political dynamics of the Arab Middle East are formed and shaped by the interactions of a rich conglomeration of ideas, and within the political structures of the region, a variety of political actors and social forces vie for power, influence, or merely a voice at local, national, and often international levels. Among the discourses that form and narrate politics and political acts in the region, conspiracism is a crucially important and, thus far, under-studied component of these political discourses.

Conspiracism is an important phenomenon in understanding Arab Middle Eastern politics, even if it remains less studied than US conspiracism. The salience of it in both popular and state discourses in the Arab world is important, and derives from a much wider and complex set of sources than merely the psychology or pathology of the region’s inhabitants. It is important both because of where it comes from, and because of its impacts.¹⁵ It stems from political structures and dynamics, specifically the interaction of social groups and forces with each other and the state. It is shaped by the relationship between political elites, between elites and institutions, between elites and society, between groups and sub-groups within society, and by political and economic conditions at both local and regional levels, as all of these dynamics shape and influence the ways in which people in the region view and interact with each other and with people from other parts of the world.

The purpose of this book, therefore, is to go beyond descriptions of conspiracism in the region, and to look beyond the basic or pathological explanations for conspiracism and to identify and explain its multiple sources. While predominantly approaching the subject matter from a political science perspective, it cannot ignore the role of other disciplines in the debate. Since conspiracism is an opaque and complex phenomenon, with cross-disciplinary sources and implications from political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology and literature, among others, some input from these fields is necessary and is drawn upon as appropriate. Ultimately and nevertheless, as a political science work the main emphasis in the book is on the macro-level, especially the regional and national level, and much less on micro-level studies that might more commonly be found in works by anthropologists, psychologists or sometimes sociologists.

Conspiracy theory, conspiracism, paranoia: terminologies and definitions

The terms ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracism’ defy easy definition, perhaps because there is such a breadth of discourses from such a variety of individuals and groups, all with varying goals and emphases to their language. A further challenge is the epistemological opaqueness of many conspiracy theories: it is difficult to draw a clear and concise line between an idea that is conspiracist versus one that, for example, is derived from political paranoia or denial – or even one that, wittingly or not, has successfully identified an actual case of a conspiracy.

Many definitions of conspiracy begin with the observation that ‘conspire’ derives from the Latin ‘breathing together’¹⁶ and point out that to tag something a ‘conspiracy theory’ or someone a ‘conspiracy theorist’ is usually pejorative or even derogatory.¹⁷ To some extent this remains true, in the West and the Arab world.¹⁸ Slivka points out that early use of the term ‘conspiracy’ was more literal, and meant simply ‘a secret collaboration between people towards some wicked end’, but that it has increasingly come to ‘describe any insufficiently explicable phenomenon that provokes anxious distrust … ’.¹⁹ Another way of approaching a definition of ‘conspiracy theory’ is provided by Shane Miller, who outlines the ways in which scholars have traditionally treated the poor logical structure of conspiracy theories:

The traditional academic treatment of conspiracy theories has been to dismiss them as seriously flawed arguments … Since then [the publication of Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics] numerous academic studies have demonstrated the argumentative weaknesses inherent to conspiracy theories. Poor evidence or lack of evidence, circular reasoning, repetition of unproven premises, and false dilemmas are all standard characteristics of conspiratorial arguments.²⁰

However this is as much a description as a definition. Boym takes a different approach, including in the definition a structure that requires conspiracy theories to encompass a full explanatory stru...

Table of contents

• Contents
• A note on transliteration
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conspiracism and conspiracy theories
• 3 Actual conspiracies, perceived conspiracies and historical wrongs
• 4 State, society, ideological vacuums and conspiracism
• 5 The state as conspiracist
• 6 Beyond state and society
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index