Please check out the full article where these excerpts have more context.
A secretive cabal?
Ultimately, the argument that is being made throughout Zeitgeist is that the world is being controlled by a small secret society of individuals, and in the context of the history of conspiracy theories, they are talking about the Jews. When we are told by the film about meetings of these “international bankers” that are “secretive and concealed from public view”, discussions about “an accelerated agenda by the ruthless elite”, or “people behind the government” they are breathing new life into an old racist myth that we must try to do away with.
Who was Senator Louis McFadden?
Louis McFadden, who is quoted at length in Zeitgeist, was a senator in the US in the first part of the twentieth century. He also happened to be a serious anti-Semite, and came out with lines such as, “in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money.” He is quoted twice in the film saying the following: “A world banking system was being set up here… a superstate controlled by international bankers acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure…” and “It was a carefully contrived occurrence. International bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair so they might emerge rulers of us all.” Within the context of McFadden’s world view, he is using “international bankers” as an epithet for Jews. What is notable is that the makers of Zeitgeist seem keen to omit this context, to suggest that McFadden is simply offering a critique of capitalism. The fact is that within conspiracy theories the labelling of Jews as “international bankers” and “international finance capital” is a common trope. These quotes would have been understood at the time, and is still understood by many now, to be anti-Semitic gestures.
The positivist problem
There is one reason in particular that these conspiracies may seem compatible with left wing modes of thought, and that is to do with the philosophical problem of positivism. Stated in its simplest form, this is that ideas about transforming a society cannot be straightforwardly expressed in the language or accepted modes of thought of the society that they wish to transform. And this issue is common to all transformative theories of society. Probably the most influential branch of this type of thinking stemmed from Hegel to Marx, and then into Marxists of the 20th and 21st century. The solution for them is to talk in terms of a dialectic, that is, by comparing the consciousness of a society to the material reality. The significant conclusion of this type of thought is that one’s consciousness of society, up to a certain point is always false.
The conspiracy theorists take on this question in another way. They say that if our consciousness of society is always false, it is made to be false by a small number of powerful who make it false. They believe that we are consistently duped by an all-knowing cabal who control every aspect of our lives. And the solutions differ too. For the Marxists and socialists the problem is that society produces a consciousness that doesn’t allow us to fully understand our immiseration in work, in unemployment, or in powerlessness, and the solution is the radical transformation of society to a fairer, less exploitative world. For the conspiracy theorists the answer is the elimination of this so-called small powerful elite. They do not believe that society needs any more transformation than this.
= new reply since forum marked as read