State Crimes Against Democracy

The term State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) was developed by scholars to delineate a crime category for antidemocratic political conspiracies in high office.[1][2][3][4][5][6] SCADs are defined as “concerted actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty.”[6] Many crimes committed by government officials that circumvent democracy have been documented and chronicled through scholarly, historical, and first hand accounts .[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] SCAD serves to disclose common patterns, players, and relevant connections among state propagated antidemocratic crimes that are typically represented as self-contained events or isolated aberrations.

History

The SCAD construct was formulated by Lance deHaven-Smith in a 2006 peer-reviewed article in Administrative Theory and Praxis, a scholarly journal published by the Public Administration Theory Network.[1] DeHaven-Smith is a Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. The SCAD construct was subsequently elaborated and applied in several journal articles authored or coauthored by deHaven-Smith and Matthew Witt, Associate Professor of Public Administration at La Verne University in California.[2][17][18][19][20][21][22] Other scholars who have contributed to SCAD-related theory and research include Alexander Kouzmin and Kym Thorne,[23][24] both at the University of South Australia; Christopher Hinson and Zia Obiad at Florida State University; Laurie Manwell at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada; and Aaron Good at Temple University.

A large and growing body of theory and research has developed around the SCAD construct. SCAD theory and research have been subjects of panels at annual meetings of the American Society of Public Administration in Miami, Florida, in 2009, in San Jose, California, in 2010, in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2011, and in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2012; and of the Public Administration Theory Network in Richmond, Virginia, in 2008, in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2010, and in San Francisco, California, in 2013. Peer-reviewed articles have been published in Administrative Theory and Praxis, Administration and Society, and Contemporary Politics. SCAD research was highlighted in special issues of American Behavioral Scientist (February 2010)[4][25][26][27] and Public Integrity (June 2011).[3][5][21][28][29] Books on SCADs were published in 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan (co-edited by Kouzmin, Witt, and Andrew Kakabadse)[30] and in 2013 by the University of Texas Press (by deHaven-Smith).[6] In August 2013, deHaven-Smith was interviewed about Conspiracy Theory in America on Breaking the Set with Abby Martin on RT-America.

Many other political crimes in which involvement by high officials is reasonably suspected have gone uninvestigated or have been investigated only superficially. They are included in SCAD studies even when the evidence of state complicity is contested, because excluding them would mean accepting the judgement of individuals and institutions whose rectitude and culpability are at issue.

SCADs constitute a special type of political criminality. Unlike bribery, kickbacks, bid-rigging, and other, more mundane forms of political corruption, which tend to be isolated and to affect only pockets of government activity, SCADs have the potential to subvert political institutions and entire governments or branches of government. Committed at the highest levels of public office, they are crimes that threaten democracy itself.

Relation to conspiracy theory

The origins and rhetorical function of the term "conspiracy theory" constitute an important subject matter for SCAD theory and research. At least since the 1970s, the conspiracy-theory label has been applied pejoratively to a wide range of suspicions and allegations of official wrongdoing that have not been substantiated by public officials themselves. The label suppresses mass suspicions that inevitably arise when shocking political crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when those same officials are in control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question or for investigating them after they have occurred.

Communication scientists Ginna Husting and Martin Orr, both professors at Boise State University, have studied the use of the conspiracy-theory label as a putdown and have explained how the label works to silence suspicion.[31] The conspiracy-theory label challenges the very rationality of persons who voice suspicions and thus shifts the subject of discussion from the suspicions to the speakers’ competency or lack thereof.

DeHaven-Smith has shown that the conspiracy-theory label was popularized as a pejorative term by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a propaganda program initiated in 1967.[6] The program was directed at criticisms of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated by a lone gunman. The propaganda campaign called on media corporations and journalists to criticize “conspiracy theorists” and raise questions about their motives and judgments. The CIA told its contacts that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.”

SCAD scholars hypothesize that the CIA’s role in inserting the conspiracy-theory label into the American lexicon of political speech is only one of many instances when U.S. intelligence operatives have manipulated domestic opinion by structuring the terms of discourse. For example, deHaven-Smith has argued that the nomenclature surrounding the Global War on Terror—terms like “axis of evil,” “ground zero,” and “homeland security” that are associated with World War II - and the meme “9/11” used to denote the terror attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 - emerged too quickly and were too sophisticated to have been developed without the expertise of public relations specialists.

By their very nature, SCADs are events that present a profound challenge to citizens’ most closely guarded beliefs about government and democracy. Laurie Manwell has written extensively on the many attitudes, biases, and faulty beliefs which can prevent people from processing information that challenges these pre-existing assumptions about government, reasoned dissent, and public discourse in a democratic society. In contrast to other academics’ suggestions on how to deal with conspiracy-related speech (e.g., Sunstein and Vermeule’s 2009 suggestions for taxing, fining, or banning conspiracy-related speech or for government-orchestrated cognitive infiltration of private and public beliefs),[32] Manwell’s recommendations all involved more open discourse, greater public education and media literacy, and increased political knowledge, participation and tolerance.[4] She argues that, for a functioning democracy to, at the bare minimum, survive, let alone thrive, “the right to dissent with the majority opinion, and the necessity to have this dissenting discourse within the public sphere, must be protected” (Manwell, 2010, p. 849).

References

  1. 1 2 Lance deHaven-Smith (2006), When Political Crimes Are Inside Jobs: Detecting State Crimes Against Democracy, Administrative Theory & Praxis, Vol. 28: No. 3. (September), pp. 330-355
  2. 1 2 Lance deHaven-Smith and Matthew T. Witt (2009). “Preventing State Crimes against Democracy,” Administration and Society 41(5), 527-550.
  3. 1 2 Lance deHaven-Smith and Alexander Kouzmin, “Introduction to the Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy, December 2009,” Public Integrity. Summer 2011, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 197-201.
  4. 1 2 3 Laurie A. Manwell (2010). In denial of democracy: Social psychological implications for public discourse on state crimes against democracy post-9/11. American Behavioral Scientist, 53: 848-884.
  5. 1 2 Lance deHaven-Smith, Editor (Summer 2011). “Symposium on State Crimes against Democracy, December 2009,” Public Integrity. Summer 2011, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 197-252.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Lance deHaven-Smith (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
  7. ↑ Sheehan; Smith; Kenworthy, Neil; Hedrick; E.W. (1971). The Pentagon Papers. New York: The New York Times. ISBN 0-80700526-6.
  8. ↑ Solomon, Norman (2005). War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-0-471-69479-3.
  9. ↑ Perkins, John (2006). Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 0-452-28708-1.
  10. ↑ Harman, Chris (2008). A People's History of the World. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-238-7.
  11. ↑ McCoy, Alfred (1972). The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. ISBN 0-06-012901-8.
  12. ↑ Klien, Naomi (2007). The Shock Doctrine. New York: A Metropolitan Book, Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-312-42799-9.
  13. ↑ Bailyn, Bernard (2003). To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41377-4.
  14. ↑ Alexander, Michelle (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-103-7.
  15. ↑ Blum, William (2005). Rogue State (Third ed.). Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press. ISBN 9781567513745.
  16. ↑ Zinn, Howard (1980). A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
  17. ↑ Matthew T. Witt and Lance deHaven-Smith (2008). (Lead article) Conjuring the holographic state: Scripting security doctrine for a (new) world of disorder. Administration & Society, 40, 547-585.
  18. ↑ M. G. Alkadry and Matthew T. Witt (2009). Abu Ghraib and the normalization of hate and torture. Public Integrity, 11, 137-155.
  19. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith, (2010). “State Crimes Against Democracy in the War on Terror: Applying the Nuremberg Principles to the Bush-Cheney Administration,” Contemporary Politics. Vol. 16, No. 4, December, pp. 403-420.
  20. ↑ Matthew T. Witt and Lance deHaven-Smith (December, 2011). The privatization of public policy: Elite maneuvers in an age of institutionalized ambiguity. Public Administration Review, 71, 974-977.
  21. 1 2 Matthew T. Witt (2011). Exit, voice, loyalty revisited: Implications for public administration in dark times. Public Integrity, 13, 239-252.
  22. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith and Matthew T. Witt (2013). “Conspiracy Theory Reconsidered: Responding to Mass Suspicions of Political Criminality in High Office,” Administration & Society. (Published early online in October 2012).
  23. ↑ Alexander Kouzmin, Matthew T. Witt, and Kym Thorne (2009). “Killing the King” in Public Administration: From critical epistemology to fractured ontology and limited agency. Public Administration Quarterly, 33, 341-371.
  24. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith, Alexander Kouzmin, Kym Thorne, and Matthew T. Witt (2010). “The Limits of Permissible Change in U.S. Politics and Policy: Learning from the Obama Presidency,” Administrative Theory & Praxis, 32 (1), 134-140.
  25. ↑ Matthew T. Witt and Alexander Kouzmin (2010). Sense making under “holographic” conditions: Framing research into state crime(s) against democracy (SCADs). American Behavioral Scientist, 53, 783-794.
  26. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith (2010). “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” American Behavioral Scientist. Volume 53, Number 6 (February), pp. 795-825.
  27. ↑ Matthew T. Witt (2010). Pretending not to see or hear, refusing to signify: The farce and tragedy of geocentric public affairs scholarship. American Behavioral Scientist, 53, 921-939.
  28. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith, “Myth and Reality of Whistleblower Protections: Official Behavior at the Top,” Public Integrity. Summer 2011, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 203-216.
  29. ↑ Lance deHaven-Smith and Alexander Kouzmin, “Symposium Postscript: Future Research,” Public Integrity. Summer 2011, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 249-252.
  30. ↑ Matthew T. Witt (2012). SCAD Alert: Occupy Wall Street is to capitalism what labor unions were to communism – A systemic contradiction that can be neither swallowed nor spit out. Kouzmin, A., Witt, M. & Kakabadse, A. (Eds.), State Crimes Against Democracy: Political forensics in public affairs, 269-283. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.
  31. ↑ Ginna Husting and Martin Orr (2007). Dangerous machinery: “Conspiracy theorist” as a transpersonal strategy of exclusion. ‘’Symbolic Interaction’’, 30: 127-150.
  32. ↑ Cass Sunstein and Adriene Vermuele (2009). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(2): 202-227.
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