Prewar attacks fuel whispers of conspiracy
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By Peter Rowe and Scott LaFee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS December 4, 2006 Historians
agree that imperial Japan, hoping to cripple United States forces in the
Pacific, scored a major although fatally incomplete victory 65 years ago
this week at Pearl Harbor.
U.S. Navy / New York Times
Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories were revived in the aftermath of the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.
But there's a version of the tale you won't find in textbooks. In this
alternative history, Dec. 7, 1941, was also President Franklin Roosevelt's
triumph. He had withheld information that would have warned the Pacific Fleet,
willingly sacrificing a dozen ships and more than 2,400 Americans to achieve
his goal. FDR had dragged America into World War II. That's
the gist of the backdoor to war conspiracy theory, originally championed by
Roosevelt's right-wing foes in the 1940s. This revisionist view of Pearl Harbor
was dying when Sept. 11, 2001, cast it in a new light. The notion that an
American president would welcome a surprise attack as a pretext for war was
taken up anew. This time, though, the argument came from leftist commentators.
Underground, unofficial versions of history have flourished in
most countries. In fact, some Japanese conservatives advance their own
backdoor to war theory. In one Tokyo museum, photos, charts and texts
prove that American actions in Asia and the Pacific had left Japan with no
choice short of hostilities.
New York Times
John F. Kennedy's assassination has long been a favorite topic for conspiracy
theorists. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas is seen from the
location where Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963.
If history was ever a static and universally accepted account of the past, that
notion now is as outmoded as a stovepipe hat. In the United States,
it's increasingly a mainstream view that secret forces with mysterious aims
shape our destiny. In 1998, CBS News found that three out of four Americans
believe that the truth behind John F. Kennedy's assassination has been covered
up. This summer, a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that more than one
out of three Americans believe it is very likely or somewhat likely that
federal officials planned 9/11 or at least did nothing to stop the attacks.
Why people embrace conspiracy theories is a complex topic, touching
on ideology and psychology. In our time, two factors have made these tales more
pervasive: The Internet accelerates the pace at which isolated
mutterings can become national phenomena, exposed to a potential audience of
billions. Video clips and documents, real and
manufactured, zip through the ether and buttress tales that might otherwise be
dismissed as cockamamie speculation. From the Pentagon Papers to
Watergate, late 20th-century scandals proved that the official version of
events can be a smoke screen hiding a more sinister and more accurate story.
Americans tend to be particularly receptive to anti-government conspiracy
theories, said Kathryn Olmsted, a University of California Davis history
professor who is writing a book on this subject.
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MM_contentVersion))) In the early 20th century, though, government was not
the most popular villain. Then, Olmsted noted, various plots were blamed on
forces based outside the United States, including religions (the Catholic
Church, Judaism) and industries. The first World War, one theory held, was
caused by an unholy alliance of European arms dealers and international
bankers.
But as Washington's power grew, conspiracy theorists found more masterminds
past and present within the federal government. In 1937, a book
titled Why Was Lincoln Murdered? gave a startling answer. The Great
Emancipator, author Otto Eisenschiml argued, fell victim to a plot cooked up by
his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. That attracted a lot of
attention at the time, noted William Hanchett, history professor emeritus at
San Diego State University and an authority on Lincoln's assassination. But
it's been completely discredited. Many conspiracy theories meet a
similar fate they rise on the hot air of controversy; wobble as experts poke
holes in their fragile underpinnings; and then drop into oblivion. Click
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Scarred cathedrals The Pearl Harbor conspiracy
theories, though, floated anew in the aftermath of 9/11. There are
undeniable parallels between the events. Gazing into the battleship Arizona's
watery grave is not unlike peering through the fence surrounding ground zero.
In each of these scarred, secular cathedrals, Americans died in a sneak attack
and America changed course. All according to a secret White House
plan, some claim. In the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, 36 percent of all
Americans suspected that the federal government planned or allowed 9/11 because
they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East. This
echoes the arguments about Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor found in books such as
John Toland's Infamy (1982) and Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit: The Truth
About FDR and Pearl Harbor (2000). In these two conspiracies, said
Emily Rosenberg, author of A Date Which Will
Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory and a history professor at the
University of California Irvine, the conspiracy is at the heart of the
government. That buys into the anti-government rhetoric that is so prevalent.
Unfortunately, there is reason for such rhetoric. In 1990, a New
York Times/WCBS-TV poll found that black Americans most apt to embrace
conspiracies were also most familiar with U.S. history. They knew that the FBI
had infiltrated the civil-rights movement in the 1960s and that the U.S. Public
Health Service had withheld effective treatment from black men in the Tuskegee
syphilis study of 1932-72. For Americans of all races and
backgrounds, well-documented government scandals have diminished faith in the
official story. At the same time, though, even the most elaborate conspiracy
theory can offer an odd sort of comfort. There is a natural tendency
when a tragedy or catastrophe happens to try to make it
comprehensible, Olmsted said. (Full disclosure: Olmsted is married to Bill
Ainsworth, a Union-Tribune reporter.) People often reduce
complicated issues to a single cause the bigger the issue, the bigger the
cause, said Patrick Leman, a British psychologist who studies the origins of
conspiracy theories. Leman's research also indicates that people who
are inclined to believe conspiracy theories are also inclined to discard facts
that run counter to those theories. It's called confirmatory
bias, said Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things and
executive director of the Skeptics Society. People tend to look for or
recognize evidence that supports their ideas and ignore everything else.
Case in point: Olmsted notes that every war that the United States has
fought since 1900 has spawned a conspiracy theory, often inspired by the
conviction that Americans love peace. Opponents of war, at
the time or often later, argue that this is basically a peaceful country, she
said. If everyone had known all the facts, we wouldn't have gone to war.
Conversely, more commonplace, non-conspiratorial explanations can
shake our faith in order and reason. Rosenberg cites the clutter and
noise view, that catastrophes sometimes happen because authorities are
distracted or incompetent. This can be a difficult, if not intolerable,
reminder of chance's role in life. A 'war frenzy'
More- http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20061204-9999-1n4conspire.html
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