Description
Speaking to a journalist in 2004, the Wu-Tang Clan's Ol’ Dirty Bastard remarked of the book Behold a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper: “Everybody gets f... ." William Cooper tells you who’s f... you ... when you’re someone like me, that’s valuable information.” Published in 1991, Behold a Pale Horse is a classic of conspiracy culture, weaving together everything from UFOs and the JFK assassination to the Illuminati and a coming ice age. An influential text for the US militia movement, the book would be easy to label as a white su-premacist tract. However, it has also been influential on Black American culture, such as with the Wu-Tang Clan. Conspiracy theories of this sort promise to pull back the veil, shine a light into the shadows, and to reveal "who's f... you." In this much, they promise eman-cipation—if not from the omnipotent forces themselves then at least from the deceit in which mainstream culture cloaks the real workings of power. Conspiracism is thus analo-gous to critique. However, these modes of thought also differ in crucial ways. This paper will explore these differences, particularly reflecting upon the possibility of distinguishing 'genu-ine' emancipation from the pseudo-emancipatory promise of conspiracism.
