With the apparent demise of the Maxim Institute after Logangate, what might we expect from the Christian Right Old Guard in the future? Conspiracy theorists. We read their scrawls in newspaper letters columns, listen to their diatribes on access radio and low-rent talkback, and snicker over their ravings in the latest Investigate issue. How does one recognise a conspiracy theorist? They prefer obscure documents, rely on forged or erroneous material, make contradictory statements, reinforce their diatribes from references to their own media networks and pseudo-science, reject mainstream evidence-based proofs against their case as conspiratorial, make up "details" and disregard actual processes of social and historical change. What are their primary obsessions? According to the conspiratorially challenged, political power corrupts. If ones group benefits from an event, then ones group somehow caused it. Conspiratorial groups and finances cause social change, not economics, military activities or political philosophies. Historical events are never accidental or random. Never trust surface appearances, because one's apparent mortal enemies are 'really' allies, while vica versa also prevails. There are "hidden masters," or else "apparent" sources of power are actually "powerless." Most conspiracists inhabit the twilight zone of far right politics. They have narrow and highly constricted views of 'permissible' community membership, and that means that Asian immigrants, tangata whenua and/or LGBT community members are not. They claim to have uncovered secret "knowledge," related to "truth" about particular events, usually orchestrated by malignant organisations or individuals. Ask them to "prove" this, and you'll get respectable looking bibliographies, but look closer and you'll see they're citing kindred ideologues or else distorting their mainstream references. They warn of the end of Western civilisation or the world if their "warnings" aren't heeded- no matter if they cite urban myths within their fringe periodicals or kindred websites. One sociologist of conspiracy theories, Michael Barkun, usefully argues that conspiracy theories rely on fake "knowledges"- superseded or invalidated "knowledge", ignored "knowledge" from fringe social groups, rejected or false "knowledge" and alleged "suppressed" knowledge. Sound awfully familiar? It's because all of them pop up in both conspiracy theories and antigay fundamentalist arguments both. Witness NARTH citing discredited antigay psychopathological references from before the seventies. Witness fundamentalist reliance on Paul Cameron and Judith Riesman, despite the discrediting of their work in mainstream fora, which fits the parameters of rejected and "suppressed" knowledge. Of course, it's not knowledge per se, because it isn't evidence-based. It doesn't matter to Christian Right Old Guarders though, because the progay "conspiracy" has "suppressed" this, and a heinous "elite" is at work. Conspiracy theorists are sad and lonely types, often socially isolated and unable to form meaningful relationships, and prone to "persecution" fantasies. Fundamentalists believe that after we stop laughing at their bad haircuts, polyester wardrobe, cardies and banjos, we'll abolish them, cart them off to concentration camps and replace them with equally quaint "New Age" mumbo jumbo. In the early twentieth century, conspiracy rhetoric took a nightmare turn, culminating in the obscenity of the Nazi Holocaust, fueled by anti-Semitic hate propaganda and conspiracy theories. From the sixties onward, we got written into the plots, along with feminists, the pro-choice movement, Green groups, peace activists and the United Nations. If one trawls fundamentalist bookshops, one can witness this in the fevered imaginations of Pat Robertson, Texe Marrs et al. Robertson's fantasy includes visions of a liberal Antichrist and believes that the rot in the United States has been accumulating since the mid-nineteenth century, reinforced by a range of global organisations, and it destroyed communism while facilitating the rise of the European Union. As political scientist Dan Pipes has noted, this is not unusual, because conspiracy theorists argue that their opponents have supernatural powers and international scale. Of course, they're also conscious of the costs of popular derision if their ravings ever got out, so they tone it down if they want to look mainstream. Conspiracy theories are insidious perversions of mainstream politics. Most obviously, conspiracy theorists mainstream particular vulnerable social groups for complex social problems, parodying deeper political analysis. It is a displacement response, projecting anxieties about actual diminished government accountability onto scapegoating social 'outsider' groups. They are not the outcome of factual, evidence-based analyses or investigation that produces corroboration of otherwise anecdotal claims. Their rhetoric usually plays well in remote conservative rural backwaters, especially those in long-term economic decline. How is this relevant to us? There are antigay conspiracy theorists, and always have been, since the rise of the first wave of lesbian and gay liberation in the early seventies. In fact, there's now a British website, entitled "Gayconspiracy," which applies the above principles to blame us for everything. How meaningful is all this, though? I'll end with Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart, who have investigated how pop conspiracy theories circulate in Orange County California's Calvary Chapel Church. Within this fundamentalist sect, there is widespread obsession with fundamentalist interpretations of current events and the end of the world, as well as insidious imitation of mainstream youth culture and pop self-help therapies from the outside world. Calvary parishioners feel threatened by 'satanism', women's reproductive rights, erotica, divorce, UFOs, 'alien abductions' and us. When they talk about this, they get recognised as members of a distinctive group. Fundamentalist 'news' reinforces this, as much as Challenge Weekly, Investigate, Shine Television (Sky) and Radio Rhema do here. (Oh yes, there are anti-alien conspiracy theorists, but they aren't linked to us yet. Oh, and some of them believe that Queen Elizabeth II is a reptile, drug pusher, or writer of bad science fiction, sometimes all three. Sadly, none of these more outre theorists of elite depravity have much circulation in New Zealand. However, for a taste, read the website of one David Icke, who believes this nonsense.) Even when they take pratfalls, they 'win,' because their outraged individual anecdotes corroborate the "truth" of fundamentalist media interpretations of events and outside social movements. But all is not lost, because God will get"them" in the end! Why should we take the above seriously? Through scapegoating, conspiracy theorists poison democratic political life. They fuel extremist movements that use violence to achieve their political objectives, and may even lead to ultimate dictatorships or military conflicts. Remember Waco, Timothy McVeigh, or US antiabortion terrorists during the nineties? Could it happen here? After the Maxim Institute's fall, we should be wary of assuming that conspiracy theorists are fringe, powerless nutters. Conspiracy theory is the default position for fundamentalist politics in New Zealand. Like it or not, the Institute kept it at bay. Now, there's nothing to stop that baying (or howling at the moon, as Mr Wishart so appropriately puts it). Recommended: http://www.gayconspiracy.co.uk "Gayconspiracy" website Chip Berlet: "Conspiracism": http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooZ6-13.html#P266_102099 Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart: "Anxieties of Influence: Conspiracy Theories and Therapeutic Culture in Millenial America" in Harry West and Todd Sanders (ed) Transparency and Conspiracy: Duke University Press: Durham, North Carolina: 2003. Daniel Pipes: Conspiracy: New York: Free Press: 1997. Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America: Berkeley: University of California Press: 2003. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity: New York: New York University Press: 2002. Not Recommended: http://http://www.investigatemagazine.com Our own beloved tragic tabloid gutter glossy. Grant Jeffrey: Final Warning: Economic Collapse and The Coming World Government: Toronto: Frontier Research: 1995. Grant Jeffrey: War on Terror: Unfolding Bible Prophecy: Toronto: Frontier Research: 2002. Pat Robertson: The New World Order: Dallas: Word: 1991. Our own beloved tragic tabloid gutter glossy. Grant Jeffrey: Final Warning: Economic Collapse and The Coming World Government: Toronto: Frontier Research: 1995. Grant Jeffrey: War on Terror: Unfolding Bible Prophecy: Toronto: Frontier Research: 2002. Pat Robertson: The New World Order: Dallas: Word: 1991. http://www.patrobertson.com Pat Robertson's own website. Texe Marrs: Circle of Intrigue: The Hidden Inner Circle of the Global Illuminati Conspiracy: Austin: Living Truth: 1995. Texe Marrs: Project LUCID: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System: Austin: Living Truth: 1996. Craig Young - 23rd December 2005