A Reason blogger outs himself as a conspiracy theorist…
There is widespread (and mainstream) speculation that many of the terrorist attacks attributed to Chechens in recent years were actually perpetrated by the Russian secret services, to further the political aims of an ever-more-authoritarian Russian state. The 1999 apartment bombings triggering the Second Chechen War are widely suspected to have been the work of the FSB, the KGB’s successor organization.
This theory has been expounded by sinister demagogues like John McCain and George Soros as well as raving fantasists like John Sweeney, Johann Hari and William Safire. All good sceptics know that they’re just paranoid cranks trying to impose order upon the universe; reconcile events with their worldview; prove their own superiority to more benighted folk and, er…
Yeah, okay, I’m only messin’. I don’t know a lot about this claim and can’t judge whether it’s intriguing or a load of balls. Yet it carries all the hallmarks of a theory that would ensure one’s banishment from sensible, moderate, mainstream discourse if it was targeted against Western states or corporations. (Lots of people, after all, would have to have known.) There’s no valid epistemic rationale for this: it’s just plain hypocrisy.
January 27, 2011 at 1:47 am
“no valid epistemic rationale”
Really? I’d've thought the difference between liberal democracies and corrupt dictatorships was a fairly obvious starting point…
January 27, 2011 at 2:09 am
Most of the common objections would still have applied. Loads of people would have to have known but kept quiet; foreign rivals would presumably have guessed but zipped their lips; there’s a more immediately comprehensible perpetrator. I’m not saying it’s as, less or more likely than any plots theorists have claimed fester in Western states but the point is that most a priori reasons for dismissing them are bogus…
January 27, 2011 at 10:09 am
Possible reasons why liberal democracies don’t do this sort of thing
1 They are nicer people than corrupt dictatorships
2 All parts of their State apparatus are under deocratic control and fully accountable to the electorate.
Close examination might indicate one or two weak points in these justifications
January 27, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Hehe, yes, just two minor drawbacks.
January 27, 2011 at 11:57 pm
… I find it hard to believe they’re blowing up their own apartment blocks, for example. But Russia’s a place where journalists disappear by the dozen, not to mention the ones who get shot, and where company lawyers in dispute with the state get arrested and die mysteriously in jail. What was on board the Arctic Sea, and who hijacked it?
It’s just possible in a place like that, where tell-tales disappear or are gunned down in the street, that something outrageous could happen and those who know don’t say. Not likely, but possible.
January 28, 2011 at 3:31 am
Indeed – as in all such cases evidence should be prioritised…
Whether I’ll follow through on that grand, Goldacrean claim is quite another matter.