The central thesis of Ray F.’s letter “In Defense of Conspiracy Theory” offers both a compelling argument for why communists should seriously investigate and engage with popular conspiracy theories, and an objective assessment of the mood of the masses in the United States at present:

The people are yearning for truth. They want to know why things are the way they are. They’re open to reexamining American history to understand how we got here. More people are beginning to correctly conclude that American “Democracy” is a lie, the corporate press and parties only serve the interests of the rich, and oftentimes, that the perpetrators of some of America’s foremost high crimes are from the imperial state itself. If socialists do not offer a political indictment of these high crimes, or find a way to connect these actors, organizations, events, to our theories of political economy then we leave that counter-history space open.

It’s worth noting that the space for historical and social analysis is not fully open, even if there are relatively greater openings for communists to seize upon right now. Tucker Carlson claims ten times more views per episode across all his platforms than Fox News reports for its average prime time viewership. Candace Owens quit the Daily Wire two years ago, and has brought most of its audience (and then some) with her by now. Both of these pundits have been extremely adept at seizing on mass outrage about Epstein, Israel, the Iran War, and the overall economic situation, in order to advance their political careers and inculcate their viewers with right-wing Christian ideology.

On the other hand, the cadre organization I am a part of, Maoist Communist Union, has recently achieved a considerable following on social media by putting out reels analyzing these same topics from a Marxist perspective, spelling out our political views in a way that is clear and engaging for a broad audience. One video we posted about the Samson Option (Israel’s military strategy of last resort to threaten the world with nuclear Armageddon if it is under existential threat), garnered over a million views and thousands of comments, including from many working class people who, by all appearances, are not regular followers of online leftist discourse. These steps forward in our work of political agitation, while still quite modest, clearly support the general points Ray F. makes in his letter.

While I agree with Ray F.’s main argument, a major shortcoming I see in his treatment of this topic is that he tends to paint conspiracy theories as social phenomena that arise solely from amongst the people; for example, in his statement that “conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation are treated [by the state] as a danger, emanating from a political extreme or radical position.” I think this is an incomplete picture.

Since JFK’s assassination in 1963, the US state has encouraged the proliferation of the very term “conspiracy theory” in order to obscure the distinction between, on the one hand, the masses having some generally accurate (if imprecise) sense that the establishment narrative doesn’t add up, and trying to hypothesize why that is; and on the other, the bourgeoisie deliberately crafting elaborate counter-narratives to purposefully channel people away from a correct understanding, and then using their extensive available networks and channels for disseminating those counter-narratives. Many popular conspiracy theories actually fall under the latter category. This doesn’t mean the masses are being totally fooled by the ruling class (since such counter-narratives always build on some aspects of reality), but it does mean that people need to gain greater clarity to discern when the bourgeoisie is working intentionally and consciously to confuse us.

The Epstein files shed further light on this subject. We now know that Jeffery Epstein was personally connected with Chris Poole, founder and former CEO of 4chan, around exactly the same time that the infamous /pol/ forum launched on that website. Also in this period, one of Epstein’s confidants, Boris Nikolic, emailed him a Washington Post article about the rise of 4chan among young men, along with the comment, “This article describes why I find [Poole] interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge.” Epstein and his coterie probably had a hand in developing and disseminating various reactionary and conspiratorial ideas that were pedaled on 4chan – including antisemetic tropes (which of course hinged on some kernels of truth about Zionist influence in US politics and finance), and even the QAnon movement, which implicated Epstein himself.

Why would Epstein want to promote conspiracy theories about himself, much less ones that touched on the sick schemes of child trafficking, pornography, and rape that he was centrally involved with? Actually, this is perfectly consistent with known tactics and strategies of social control that the bourgeoisie in the US has been developing and perfecting for decades, especially in reaction to the progressive political movements of the 1960s and 70s. These include “limited hangouts,” in which intelligence officials purposefully leak partial information about a scandal so as to placate the agitated masses, and still be able to conceal the most damning aspects of the situation in question. It is well-documented that the Nixon administration deployed this strategy in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

There is decent evidence now too that “Pizzagate” (which originated from /pol/ on 4chan in 2016) was also a limited hangout. As the story went, the private emails of Anthony Weiner and John Podesta proved that DNC officials and politicians were involved in a pedophilic sex trafficking ring, supposedly operating out of local pizza parlors. As these rumors circulated online, liberal establishment papers like the New York Times were quick to build on the hysteria by casting Pizzagate as a wholly false conspiracy with no basis in reality whatsoever, which was planted by Russian agents to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and so on.

A decade later, it’s clear that some of the claims from the Pizzagate narrative were not so far from the truth: Epstein’s emails are littered with the same bizarre references to “pizza” as Podesta’s were when WikiLeaks published them in 2016. However, the specific framing presented on 4chan (that pedophilia and child rape was a phenomenon confined to a cabal in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, that the NYPD was heroically attempting to uncover the plot, etc.) led people further away from an objective understanding of the situation (in reality, the CIA and other intelligence agencies worked with Epstein, and prominent politicians from both parties were closely affiliated with him), while the liberal reaction, which basically amounted to telling people to shut up and trust authority, was equally misleading.

Based on all of this, we can see that the statement in Ray F.’s letter that “the bourgeoisie have always viewed so-called “conspiracy theorists” as a threat to the institutional legitimacy of the state itself” is somewhat oversimplified. Some conspiracy theories are a threat to them insofar as they deal with reality and therefore become popular, but others definitely aid the bourgeoisie by deflecting attention and reinforcing their own ideologies among the people.

The real theoretical threat to the capitalist ruling class is and, since its conception, always has been, Marxism. Marxism provides an all-sided and consistent explanation of the manifold outrages people are experiencing and grappling with, and, even more importantly, shows us what we need to do to combat them and eventually stamp them out: the working class has to organize to overthrow the capitalist state and establish, as Marx wrote in The Class Struggles in France, “the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.” (MCU will soon be publishing an article, “The Political Struggle of the Proletariat,” that covers more about this important topic. Curious readers can look for that to drop soon!)

In my opinion, the two letters published in response to Ray F. are both so far at odds with Marxism that they pose even less of a threat to capitalist society than the average conspiracy theory on Twitter.

In “Investigate, but Verify,” C. Derick Varn attempts to discredit the basic premise of the first letter by asserting that it “relies on the sociological idea of the "open field," which suggests the human need for explanation is so strong that people will not accept "we don't know" or "random coincidence" as an answer to major events.” It was news to me to find out that the basic communist tenet that the people have an unlimited curiosity and hunger for knowledge had been elevated to the status of a proper “sociological idea.” But regardless what it’s called, the fact is that people have a correct distrust of authority and government based on their knowledge (even partial) of the many sinister ways the ruling class tries to control us, and they look for ways to explain why and how this occurs. Varn’s blithe dismissal of this reality betrays a condescending attitude towards the masses.

Over Mao’s affirmation of the boundless potential of human knowledge (“We will come to know everything that we did not know before,” Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the CCP), Varn prefers Kant’s framework of resignation to human finitude (“Quid juris?” Critique of Pure Reason), as well as the contemporary dogma of post-modernism: “it is vital that we do not provide pseudo-answers just to fill a narrative gap when we do not—and often cannot—know the specific reasons for the events at hand.”

What Varn is really saying here is that it is wrong to apply our general knowledge to understand particular situations. This positivst ideology exclusively serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. If we concede that there are some (even quite significant and outrageous!) aspects of capitalist society that we fundamentally can’t understand, then what basis is there for the working class to take action against them? None, and that is how the ruling class wants it to be. That is why Lenin struggled so fiercely against the positivst tendencies that gained currency within the Russian Marxist movement after the defeat of the 1905 revolution:

Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society … The objective, class role of empirio-criticism consists entirely in rendering faithful service to the fideists in their struggle against materialism in general and historical materialism in particular. (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism)

Lastly, whereas C. Derick Varn at least addresses the content of Ray F.’s arguments, Andie Stewart’s letter “Conspiratorial Thought in the Left” neglects to deal with it entirely, beyond making the minimal necessary connection to the topic of conspiracy theories. However, any reader with an interest in supporting the development of a communist movement in the US should summarily reject such absurd positions as Stewart’s defense of Chomsky’s “anti-conspiracy” line on the JFK assassination. It seems she did not pick up on Ray F.’s allusion to Chomsky’s now-incontrovertible ties with Epstein and the rest of the US imperialist class, viz. “we continue to see extended debate and discussion about how relevant it is that certain prominent theoreticians and academics were funded by the CIA in the Cold War.”

I think this exchange has been very fruitful in drawing out not only the differing opinions among Cosmonaut’s readership on conspiracy theories and how communists and leftists should engage with them, but also on some more general philosophical questions about the fundamental nature of knowledge and truth. It will be very helpful to have further debate on these latter foundational questions as they apply to all manner of specific topics in economics, politics, and culture!

Kat