From: SNARG@LO.COM   
      
   The situation is little better in the British higher education system,   
   through which a surprising number of actual or suspected suicide bombers   
   have passed. Afro-centric history and feminist economics are constructed of   
   little lies built on the foundation of a much bigger post-modern lie: that   
   there is no such thing as objective truth - so you might as well grab that   
   mouse and brainwash yourself.   
      
      
   Ancient fantasies that infect the internet and inspire suicide bombers   
   By Damian Thompson   
      
   Daily Telegraph   
   (Filed: 06/08/2005)   
      
   My local Islamic bookshop is a ramshackle place whose volumes are barely   
   visible through a mist of dust and burnt spices. Here the jovial staff -   
   "All right, mate?" - will sell you commentaries on the Koran, hanging lamps,   
   copper teapots and phone cards. They will also dispense, equally cheerfully,   
   copies of a paperback which explains that Jews ritually murder Christian   
   children and use their blood to season Passover matzo balls.   
      
   The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a version of the medieval "blood   
   libel" cooked up by the tsarist secret police a century ago. It is a work of   
   the blackest propaganda, its every assertion demonstrably false. Yet it is   
   circulating in 21st-century Britain, through bookshops, online book services   
   and websites, nearly all of them Islamic but by no means all of them readily   
   identifiable as the "extremist" outlets that Tony Blair proscribed at his   
   press conference yesterday. The audience for the Protocols stretches far   
   beyond fanatical jihadists; no one has surveyed "moderate" Muslims to   
   discover how many accept its central tenet, but my guess is that community   
   spokesmen would have a hard time accounting for the results on the Today   
   programme.   
      
   Before we raise our hands in horror, however, it is worth scanning the   
   shelves of the chain bookstore in a nearby shopping mall. For most of the   
   past year, its best-selling title has been The Da Vinci Code, a thriller   
   based on a myth about the Merovingian bloodline of Jesus that its author,   
   Dan Brown, believes to be true. He is thus presenting secret "facts" in the   
   form of fiction, which is also the technique adopted by an Egyptian   
   television soap opera based on the Protocols.   
      
   If you prefer your conspiracy theories au naturel, there are books arguing   
   the complicity of the United States in the September 11 atrocities, and at   
   least one suggesting that President Bush planned them. The health section,   
   meanwhile, stocks as many titles rubbishing medical science as those   
   explaining it. These, too, are conspiracy theories, and not as harmless as   
   they appear. (A musician friend of mine will walk with a stick for the rest   
   of her life after natural healers identified the emotional roots of a   
   "virus" that turned out to be a near-fatal bacterial infection.)   
      
   For centuries, a stream of "hidden wisdom" has flowed alongside the river of   
   Western progress, absorbing empirically discredited ideas such as demonology   
   and astrology. Paradoxically, the greater the accumulation of scientific   
   evidence, the more the guardians of alternative wisdom cited science as the   
   basis of their theories. The difference lay, and still lies, in methodology.   
   A Victorian engineer might accurately measure the dimensions of the Egyptian   
   pyramids - and then align them ingeniously with the numbers in the Book of   
   Revelation. In our own day, Graham Hancock et al have used similar data to   
   demonstrate the existence of an Antarctic Atlantis, the ruins of life on   
   Mars or, my personal favourite, an ancient Roman colony in Arizona.   
      
   One effect of these books is the pollution of intellectual life: intimidated   
   by the success of Pyramids of the Gods and The Da Vinci Code, real   
   archaeologists and historians are increasingly presenting the past as a   
   succession of mysteries. But it is the broader methodology of this "hidden   
   wisdom" that poses the real threat - because it is employed, among others,   
   by British suicide bombers.   
      
   All conspiracy theories collect supposed facts to bolster an existing   
   thesis: the reverse of scientific method. Political conspiracy theories,   
   alleging a global plot by the powers of Satan, have circulated in their   
   modern form since the 18th century - "circulated" being the operative word,   
   since they have depended on literature being passed from hand to hand.   
   Television speeded up this process in the Middle East, thanks to the Arab   
   world's Jew-obsessed state broadcasters. But it was the internet that really   
   opened up the apocalyptic possibilities of what the American historian   
   Richard Landes calls "self-brainwashing".   
      
   In the past few weeks, too much attention has been given to the effect of   
   radical mosques on British-based suicide bombers; not enough has been given   
   to the broadband connection between the bombers and websites that repeat   
   medieval anti-Semitic fantasies and Islamic End Times prophecies. Tens of   
   thousands of Muslim youths regularly view these sites in their bedrooms and   
   internet cafés. Blocking access to them is a near-impossible task, even for   
   this control-freak Government.   
      
   In any case, the problem goes deeper than that, as the Prime Minister   
   indicated when he retreated into waffle yesterday on being asked about   
   political correctness. It is not just that multiculturalism, whether in   
   Britain, France or America, teaches students to be ashamed of the history of   
   their host society. It also declines to challenge the conspiracy theories to   
   which ethnic minorities - including the non-Muslim black community - are   
   susceptible. I was once at a conference at Boston University at which a   
   panel of mixed-race academics discussed the proposition (accepted by 30 per   
   cent of black Americans) that the United States government manufactured Aids   
   as a weapon of genocide. After a respectful debate, I asked each member of   
   the panel if he or she was prepared to denounce the theory. Nobody was, on   
   the grounds that it might constitute "disrespect".   
      
   The situation is little better in the British higher education system,   
   through which a surprising number of actual or suspected suicide bombers   
   have passed. Afro-centric history and feminist economics are constructed of   
   little lies built on the foundation of a much bigger post-modern lie: that   
   there is no such thing as objective truth - so you might as well grab that   
   mouse and brainwash yourself.   
      
   That this world view should have been embraced so enthusiastically in   
   Britain is particularly sad and poignant, given the proud empirical   
   traditions of British philosophy and this country's astonishing contribution   
   to scientific knowledge. It is this heritage that we urgently need to   
   recover. We can block websites and expel ranting preachers, but we will not   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)