Nick Terry
Illuminator
While debating on another forum I suddenly noticed that several woos (in this instance, Holocaust deniers) were citing as "authoritative" two different books that have appeared via the left-wing publisher Pluto Press.
Closer inspection (well, okay, investiGoogling) revealed that the books in question were fairly suspect, but being cited extensively across the woo-niverse (Tarpley, rense.com, etc).
The first was William Engdahl, who turns out to have been a LaRouche associate:
William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, © 1992, 2004. Pluto Press Ltd
For a concentrated excerpt of CT lunacy, click here
http://www.netnative.com/news/06/mar/1090.html
to find Engdahl babbling about the Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers etc.
The funny this is he claims Islamic studies maven Bernard Lewis was the author of a 'strategy' for the Middle East which was involved in the overthrow of the Shah, but doesn't notice that his claim is based on an alleged paper at the Bilderberg Conference of May 1979, when in fact the conference took place in April... and the Shah fled Iran in January 1979!
The other book that looked dubious was Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler; how Britain and America made the Third Reich, Pluto Press, 2005. Preparata is supposedly a prof at the University of Washington-Tacoma, but very little is turfed up in a Google search except links to online booksellers and then, a page or so in, lots of references in woo blogs and woo sites. E.g. here: http://911blogger.com/node/10120
The argument seems to be that Britain has been conspiring to destroy Germany since 1870, and together with the US engineered the rise of the Nazis. Yeah, right.
This isn't the first time I've run into the notion that Pluto Press puts out conspiracy theories. Bosnia specialist Marko Attila Hoare shredded a book by Diana Johnstone, Fool’s crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western delusions, Pluto Press, London 2002 - Johnstone went so far as to basically deny the Srebrenica massacre amidst her anti-US ranting.
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=1041&reportid=162
What seems to be common to all these books is a lack of extensive referencing, very little academic attention, and authorship by figures marginal to academia. Then there's the Chomsky Issue - Pluto Press puts out a number of his books. Not to mention that they have also put out titles by anti-Zionist Israel Shahak, Howard Zinn, and other borderline cases.
The question is - has anyone come across other Pluto Press titles that look dodgy or have espoused one or other forms of 'soft' woo, or whether other authors actually go so far as to advocate essentially New World Order CTs.
The thing that disturbs is there are a number of apparently quite sane authors who have published with Pluto over the years - and then they let in LaRouchies?!?
Closer inspection (well, okay, investiGoogling) revealed that the books in question were fairly suspect, but being cited extensively across the woo-niverse (Tarpley, rense.com, etc).
The first was William Engdahl, who turns out to have been a LaRouche associate:
William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, © 1992, 2004. Pluto Press Ltd
For a concentrated excerpt of CT lunacy, click here
http://www.netnative.com/news/06/mar/1090.html
to find Engdahl babbling about the Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers etc.
The funny this is he claims Islamic studies maven Bernard Lewis was the author of a 'strategy' for the Middle East which was involved in the overthrow of the Shah, but doesn't notice that his claim is based on an alleged paper at the Bilderberg Conference of May 1979, when in fact the conference took place in April... and the Shah fled Iran in January 1979!
The other book that looked dubious was Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler; how Britain and America made the Third Reich, Pluto Press, 2005. Preparata is supposedly a prof at the University of Washington-Tacoma, but very little is turfed up in a Google search except links to online booksellers and then, a page or so in, lots of references in woo blogs and woo sites. E.g. here: http://911blogger.com/node/10120
The argument seems to be that Britain has been conspiring to destroy Germany since 1870, and together with the US engineered the rise of the Nazis. Yeah, right.
This isn't the first time I've run into the notion that Pluto Press puts out conspiracy theories. Bosnia specialist Marko Attila Hoare shredded a book by Diana Johnstone, Fool’s crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western delusions, Pluto Press, London 2002 - Johnstone went so far as to basically deny the Srebrenica massacre amidst her anti-US ranting.
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=1041&reportid=162
What seems to be common to all these books is a lack of extensive referencing, very little academic attention, and authorship by figures marginal to academia. Then there's the Chomsky Issue - Pluto Press puts out a number of his books. Not to mention that they have also put out titles by anti-Zionist Israel Shahak, Howard Zinn, and other borderline cases.
The question is - has anyone come across other Pluto Press titles that look dodgy or have espoused one or other forms of 'soft' woo, or whether other authors actually go so far as to advocate essentially New World Order CTs.
The thing that disturbs is there are a number of apparently quite sane authors who have published with Pluto over the years - and then they let in LaRouchies?!?
