Wednesday, August 16, 2006
(4:12 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Process and Conspiracy
As we have mentioned here before, David Ray Griffin, noted process theologian, has espoused 9/11 Conspiracy Theorism and written way too many books on the topic. This might leave you wondering: Is there any connection between process theology and conspiracy theorism?In my research, I have uncovered conclusive evidence that there indeed is a necessary conceptual and empirical connection between conspiracy theorism and process thought. I will present my results here briefly.
It begins in the original edition of Process and Reality. Throughout, Whitehead makes connections between his concept of God and the "wicked conspiracies of the Freemasons," which are said to control the course of history in an analogously indirect way. While not denying the government and business leaders of his time their autonomy, the "poisonous lies of the Freemasons" work to influence them in the direction that the "treacherous cabal" desires. The 1979 edition of Process and Reality leaves these passages out. (It goes without saying that David Ray Griffin was a co-editor of this expurgated version.)
Upon his retirement, Whitehead is said to have stumbled upon a pamphlet arguing that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was coming and let it happen in order to have a pretext for entering World War II. He wrote two books on the topic: The Pearl Harbor Myth and Roosevelt's Whitewash: Inconsistencies in the Official Account of Pearl Harbor. These volumes had very small print runs; no copies are currently extant. The library at Claremont Graduate School lists its copies as "lost or stolen"; reportedly, the University of Chicago "lost" its copies when the Divinity School's library was absorbed into the Regenstein. Coincidence? Hardly.
Charles Hartshorne, Whitehead's most prominent student and one of the most decisive figures in process theology, followed a similar trajectory. Though he initially distanced himself from Whitehead's views on Pearl Harbor, his continual work with Whitehead's texts appears to have produced the same effects we've observed in Griffin -- by Hartshorne's own testimony, "almost immediately on hearing about it [the assassination of President Kennedy], I knew it had to be an inside job. Only a child could believe that a confused youth acting alone could have assassinated the president." Students report that Hartshorne spent hours analyzing the sole video recording of the event, pointing out what he took to be the numerous inconsistencies.
Hartshorne's published statements on this matter are largely limited to letters to the editors of smalltown newspapers in Texas; more reputable venues refused to run Hartshorne's angry and often rambling and incoherent screeds. He completed four manuscripts on the topic, none of which found a publisher. It was his disillusionment over this issue that led him to devote most of his final years to bird-watching.
John B. Cobb, Jr. has shown more discretion than Whitehead and Hartshorne in terms of publications, but his students report that his lectures have always been riddled with paranoid statements -- throughout Reagan's presidency, for instance, Cobb made insistent reference to the "strange coincidence" that the hostages in Iran were released only after the election, and he later claimed to have "documented proof" that all ATF agents had called off work the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. He has more recently distanced himself from Griffin for not being extreme enough.
So as you can see, there is a necessary relationship between being a process theologian and being a conspiracy theorist, as shown by a brief, unbiased, and thoroughly documented survey of the careers of its leading exponents.
