I was asked to write a 300 word piece, topic of my choice, as one of a handful of guest columists for the latest issue #13 of Shift Magazine which is currently available to buy from a number of independent outlets or ordered online. My article – Hip Hop & Conspiracy Theories – is reproduced blow:
We’ve all been there before, putting the World to rights with someone that seems fairly intelligent until that awkward mention of the Illuminati. Like listening to a songs sublime lyricism exposing police brutality, ghetto voices for the voiceless, then a line about the NWO. Damn! Why are conspiracy theories so popular? Having been involved with some of the major players of the UK Hip Hop scene this is a scenario that is all too common.
Culturally Hip Hop is rooted in social conscious politics, far from a homogenous art form with many varying strands (gangsta, religious, conscious rap), the one unifying factor being an unhealthy infatuation with conspiracy theories. Maybe the Five Percenters, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, holds some responsibility for its influence on Hip Hop’s early development. But this would ignore the wider popularity in Conspiracism that has exploded since the advent of the Internet.
Which is a great shame as many well meaning enthusiastic people get lost down the rabbit hole, masquerading simplistic hypotheses as intelligence, while lacking a very real knowledge of the historical development of the Conspiracy Ideology. It’s origins as an answer to comprehending the French Revolution replaced an understanding of how mass popular uprisings can overthrow Authority, with a belief in elite secret societies dictating the course of history. An ideology that has been courted by both Left and Right, influenced with virulent anti-Semitism, racial supremacy and paranoia, producing venomous individuals like Hitler, Farrakhan, Stalin and Ahmadinejad. It’s popularity today, especially within Hip Hop, which comes from a background of class-conscious libertarian activity, spreads a political apathy amongst many. To be Revolutionary it’s enough to rant about the Illuminati, H.A.R.R.P and 911 being an inside job. This does a great disservice to what has always projected it self as a progressive cultural form with revolutionary potential, keeping itself trapped within an ideological ghetto, while rationality and real social change remains ignored. Ultimately it keeps back all poor communities from breaking the chains of their circumstances that the very real conspiracy of Capitalism and the Class System has shackled them in.
