Following the Reverend Wright saga as loosely as possible without losing a grip in the zeitgiest, one thing got my attention and seemed worth writing about. It was the myth that AIDS was developed and released by the US government in order to kill off American Blacks and the world's poor.
First, it's important to discuss the basis behind this belief. When I was in public health school, one of my professors liked to tell ong-winded stories about his days in Nigeria spearheading smallpox eradication. He was on the team that wiped the disease from the earth, so he was entitled to the high horse he straddled. The topic of the origin of the AIDS myth came up one day in class. He said that the myth that the CIA was responsible for AIDS came from Soviet Psy-Ops. The belief dispersed among Soviet African allies; like Angola and Mozambique, embroiled in the cold war fought in jungles across the world.
Then, there's the scientific way of looking at the disease. There's a simian variant to AIDS that is common among monkeys commonly consumed in the form of "bush meat" it was only a matter of time before the bugs in the monkeys wised up to the endless supply of human T-cells available to chew on and turn into virus factories, just a monkey cutlet away. There's even genetic evidence that tracks the human origins of AIDS to regions of East Africa, going back decades before the civil rights movement. A decent conspiracy theory would at least have its timing right.
Here's a link to a good article that covers many of the theories of the disease's origin, including the conspiracies.
Next, being my blog, I want to put my own conjecture into the fray. If the CIA or the FBI indeed ever thought that Black Americans were somehow an existential threat to the nation, why not plant some operatives and uncover or fabricate conspiracies among their leaders? That more closely follows the M.O. of people like J. Edgar Hoover. It's certainly more targeted, contained and proven than biological warfare. Why would anyone release a disease that kills indiscriminately across all continents of the world, all human lifestyles, all skin tones with the goal of eradicating one group? What sense does that make? Think of the essential narcissism underlying the belief that the AIDS epidemic is all about me and people like me. Think of the grandiose paranoia that supports such an irrational belief.
And this belief is alive and well among many, thriving among certain members of the black intelligencia and spreading in a fashion rivaling the virulence of the disease itself.
Reverend Wright wasn't the first time I've heard this from surprising quarters. My wife had a long, drawn out argument with an anthropology professor who perpetuated the belief that AIDS was a conspiracy against poor blacks. To keep the discussion grounded in fact, she brought in journal articles that refuted the myth, trying at least to present a dissenting point of view to the (mostly black) class she was in. The professor grudgingly agreed to disagree on her points, despite presenting any documentation lend some fact to her beliefs. This coming from a Ph.D. candidate at a major university teaching hundreds of young minds a year.
And I imagine powerful preachers across the country, leaders of their flocks, presiding over their congregants every Sunday with messages of paranoia, hatred, and superstition. I imagine college professors, sitting comfortably in the easy chair of their tenure, dusting chalk off their fingertips with an air of nobility as they explain to a wide-eyed class the truths about the government's involvement in the AIDS epidemic.
Yesterday as I was leaving work, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon crack vial on the front, with the words "Government Assistance" underneath. That belief ignores demand and makes up something about supply. I think that crack is simply the most profitable way of dividing cocaine up into small bits and ensuring that people can never get enough. But that's another theory to debunk another time.
It needs to be said that there's usually some rational basis behind irrational thinking. It is accepted fact that researchers allowed scores of black men over a period of 40 years ending in the early 70s to die of syphilis in the so-called Tuskegee experiments. It seems plausible that any militant group in this country has someone from the intelligence community assigned to their case. It is definitely the case that no matter who you are, if you're black, you're more likely to end up in a traffic stop, and you're best off avoiding most contact with the police altogether. If you're black, there's good reason to be paranoid. As Henry Kissinger once said, "even paranoids have enemies."
But belief that it the government is to blame for any or all social ills just doesn't add up and does no one any good. Such unfounded, emotional beliefs are often the motivating tools of demagogues grasping for ever greater amounts of power. To use an extreme example, consider the myths that Hitler perpetuated in the early thirties placing blame for the collapse of interwar Germany on the Jews. Hitler's beliefs and assertions superseded dozens of rational explanations, such as worldwide economic collapse, a country recovering from a war that killed millions and destroyed much of Europe's industrial complex. He would never have been at the center of a world war without such myths motivating millions of men and women to his cause. There is a seduction to myth that leaves logic to the cynics and the intellectual weaklings among us. People in search of power will always put truth aside for their own sakes, and it often works.
The AIDS myth would never have gone anywhere if it wasn't somehow useful to authority figures who can also claim themselves as victims. With the exception of certain preachers and professors, it does no one any good.
