A Review Of Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

This is an abridged version of a longer piece I have written, but this version will be appearing in the Socialist Worker newspaper next week in the commentary section.


Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch

In 2003 the political commentator David Aaronovitch wrote these words on his position over the Iraq war: "If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere. They probably are."

This neatly summarises the genuine, fundamental, fear people have of an official position given to them by their government. Are we being told the truth? Sometimes this is over potentially laughable issues; UFO’s and so on. But, when the stakes are high, as they are in a decision to go to war, the official position becomes of the gravest importance. Which is why it is so ironic that David Aaronovitch’s “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History” sometimes feels like a cover-up in itself.

He hosts the book, rather like a proprietor of a freak show, beckoning his punters in with the right blend of empathy and condemnation; pained by the monstrosities he displays, but equally factual as he describes conspiracy theorists’ grotesque failure to resemble reality and nudging, winking, at our need to share in his view of the stereotypical theorist.

Guiding us through familiar but nevertheless interesting territory; Zionist conspiracies, Diana and MI5, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, 9/11, he quite accurately displays the sloppy twisted reasoning and tunnel-vision research that is so often the backbone of many of these theories.

And it is a point well made in many respects. The 9/11 truth campaign is awash with demented scenarios. Some literally believe that Mossad were controlling the planes with a remote control or that the hijackers were on the Rumsfeld pay roll, or that the CIA hijacked the third plane and its inhabitants were taken to a secret destination and were then executed... ad nauseum. But that’s why conspiracy theorists are too soft a target and to tarnish them all with the same brush makes it impossible to distinguish between their two distinct types.

The first type, that probably has no effect in shaping history other than to sell books or films (fake moon landings, Christ’s bloodline) are significantly different from the second (9/11 and 7/7 truthers for example). Because the first type, that would have us believe the Lochness monster fired the shot behind the grassy knoll, is a different breed to the second that, however mistaken in its conclusions, is desperately trying to legitimately question a version of events.

What’s equally frustrating is that he has missed a great opportunity here. A better book would have analysed the JFK assassination as the template for all great conspiracy theories, with its heady blend of secrecy, power, a nation devastated, combined with the media anatomy of an event; who shot from where, who paid who, and then examining how it was all, literally, framed by the Zapruder film which is now the “last witness” as it were, and used by both parties as a corroboration of the Oswald theory or a denial.

Because it is the way that the JFK conspiracy theory transpired, that set the pattern for the methods of the others. A good example is “Loose Change”, the film that is the canon of 9/11 conspiracists, as it borrows hugely from the form of the JFK one. The CNN film is the Zapruder film and for unaccounted buildings disappearing, read puffs of smoke behind the grassy knoll. What is inherent in the irritation that many feel on the left is that when addressing 9/11 the truthers have succumbed to ideas, exotically alluring and, in supposedly unmasking a cover-up, they actually allow the real cover-up to go unchecked.

The real story of 9/11 is a tale of US foreign policy backfiring, with its roots in British and American involvement in the Middle East for hundreds of years. Depending on where one starts. But then in their attempt to challenge the Neocons, the truth movement merely plays into their hands. It creates a canny diversion from answering the question that the families of the dead are so needy for.

At the end of the book Aaronovitch arrives at this conclusion: “If the preceding chapters have demonstrated anything, it must be that conspiracy theories originate and are largely circulated among the educated and the middle-class”.
This is palpably untrue. Conspiracy theories are driven by society as a whole; gossiping tabloids, cloak and dagger civil servants, the inquisitive. It is not a chattering elite trying to fool the working-class into believing something that does not exist.

At its best it is a kind of “Conspiracy Theory for Dummies” and Aaronovitch is certainly no hack and there is definitely a genuine grappling with the whole subject of truth and history. But, at worst, its central thesis - that paranoia shapes the theorists - is flawed and he can’t help but suppress a giggle. And the irony of this scoffing is that, in the light of his own unrepentant taking to task of certain elements of the socialist press who questioned the need to go to war in Iraq, he ascribes paranoia upon the minds that realised from day one the government were lying to us.

This is the idea that eludes him, and the book. 9/11 and 7/7 truthers are not privy to a hidden truth or insane but are merely desperate to bring accountability to governments that they correctly perceive as revelling in an unpalatable art of deception. That the UK is entering a new low in distrust of parliamentary democracy and New Labour are being found out, as we speak, is testimony to the root cause of conspiracy theory.

Aaronovitchs’s book, in attempting to expose the mind of the conspiracy theorist, is nothing more than a perfect mirror for the methods they use. Which is particularly galling because he is trying to obfuscate his own complicity in accepting an official lie by deflecting blame on others.