In January 2008, during the American presidential primary season, Larry Sinclair posted a YouTube video claiming that then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama had supplied him with cocaine and that they had sexual relations in the back of a limousine. Mr Sinclair subsequently took a lie detector test, which, according to one source, suggested that he was telling the truth. This is a highly dramatic claim, particularly since today very few Americans have ever heard of it. Reference SinclairMr Sinclair (2009) published a book, appeared on a radio talk show, and his story was posted on political websites interested in alternative knowledge. That the claim is largely unknown demonstrates either the power of conspiracies to hide the truth or the power of truth to hide conspiracies.
From early on the Obama campaign realized that they were going to face a torrent of rumors, linked to the historic nature of his candidacy. To cope with these rumors the Obama campaign established a website, “Fight the Smears,” which has the purpose of allowing voters to “Learn the Truth about Barack Obama.” Or at least the truth as the Obama campaign claimed it to be. During the website's heyday, the smears included that “the McCain campaign is maliciously distorting Barack's strong record on crime” and “Barack Obama is a committed Christian and not a Muslim.” The website targeted both political opinions and rumors, not making a clear differentiation between factual inaccuracies and matters of judgment. However, the website, addressing “contemptuous smears,” did not deny that Barack Obama supplied Mr Sinclair with illegal drugs or that Mr Sinclair engaged in oral sex with the current commander-in-chief. Some allegations are beneath contempt. The story of Barack Obama being on the “down low” never reached such a critical mass that the campaign felt that a public refutation was warranted.
Given the political structures of Western democracies, politicians must accept the presence of rumors, doubtful truth claims, misleading information, and even lies. Candidates must face these rumors in order to show leadership. Different nations have rules that limit these claims, particularly those that directly target a political group or that provide a revisionist history of a salient event such as the Holocaust. American law gives much leeway to political speakers.
During the 2008 campaign, not only Barack Obama was targeted. During the same campaign, opponents accused Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, of having an affair with a lobbyist and about lying about his captivity in North Vietnam. The stories about Bill and Hillary could fill a book – indeed, they have filled several – from Hillary's lesbianism to Bill having fathered a black child. George W. Bush certainly knows about the stickiness of rumors of cocaine and drunk driving. Politicians of all stripes are the target of uncertain knowledge. Each rumor depends on the fact that some information is being deliberately hidden. Political rumors are linked to conspiratorial ideas about information diffusion.
The existence of these claims suggests a vibrant arena of uncertain knowledge. In a world in which shadowy conspiracies are possible even seemingly definitive facts may not be definitive. This doesn’t mean that there is no truth, but simply facts are not orphans and have parents to introduce them to polite society. In a mass democracy, political reputations are rarely known directly, but are known through those who shape those reputations: supporters, oppositional researchers, and those who serve these interests in the mass media.
Within the realm of rumor scholarship many scholars search for truth (Reference SunsteinSunstein, 2009). This is a noble goal. Rumor is defined as a truth claim that lacks secure standards of evidence: whether true or false, its source is unofficial (Reference Fine and EllisFine and Ellis, 2010; Reference FineFine, 2007). Wise analysts should be able to give some rumors the honorific of fact.
Yet, what about ignorance? How should we think about not knowing? A lack of awareness does not simply happen, but often it happens because there are structural hurdles that encourage this absence. Groups may wish to keep things unknown because it serves their interest, and if they have sufficient power, this ignorance is solidified, and perhaps not even considered ignorance, but simply a topic that lacks evidence. Just as facts have provenance, so does their absence. Not knowing and forgetting what had been known do not simply happen; reasons exist for ignorance (Reference High, Kelly and MairHigh, Kelly, and Mair, 2012). This field of unknowledge is known as Agnotology (Reference Proctor and SchiebingerProctor and Schiebinger, 2008), an extension of the sociology of knowledge. Why are some things known, and others unknown? Part of the answer is that ignorance is socially constructed. “It is a pervasive and fundamental influence in human cognition, emotion, action, social relations, and culture” (Reference Smithson, Proctor and SchiebingerSmithson, 2008: 209). As the philosopher Reference Mills, Proctor and SchiebingerCharles Mills (2008) argues in his essay “White Ignorance,” ignorance is not evenly spread. As in the case of Obama rumors, the particular forms of ignorance are closely linked to a set of racially problematic beliefs that may seem unproblematic from a perspective of white privilege, but are deeply uncertain given the racial structure of the claims. Mills emphasizes that there are typical ways of getting things wrong, and that this may (although not always) map on to white dominance. In the case of the Obama rumors, while most white Americans did not accept their accuracy, belief was linked to race.
Much research on the structure of ignorance has emerged from science studies, but the same is true of political analysis. The account of historian Reference ProctorRobert Proctor (2012) of what and why we know and do not know about the dangers of tobacco is exemplary. For Proctor ignorance did not just happen, rather creating ignorance has been a closely considered strategy of the tobacco industry. Ultimately we make choices as to what is knowable and institutions exist that support the knowing and others that attempt to prevent that knowing.
In his examination of cigarette companies’ usage of “science,” Proctor refers to the tobacco company executive who wrote in a memo that “[d]oubt is our product” in an attempt to claim that the scientific controversy over the malign health effects of cigarettes was still an open debate and, more significantly, should remain so. This is what is termed a manufactured controversy, linked to the deliberate creation of uncertainty (Reference MichaelsMichaels, 2008). Is the debate real or is it a sham? When is knowledge uncertain and when is it definitive? Interest groups present data that slants in their preferred direction. As in the case of rumor scholars who hope to discover truth, those who uncover faux controversies often have a firm belief as to which claims are correct or which scientists are unbiased. Knowledge communities come to determine that firm consensus exists and those with epistemic power attempt to rule out debate. Those who wish to continue the debate are termed deniers by those in control who point to the self-interests of their opponents.
The classic instance of using assertions of truth as a means of closing debate is Holocaust revisionism. Groups that doubt the depiction of the Holocaust by academic historians claim to wish for an open debate, a mutual search for truth. Opponents contend that there is no second perspective, just one truth, and opponents are deniers. These historical defenders suggest that their foes are not really revisionists (their preferred label), but deniers of unambiguous facts. A similar structure of debate is evident in the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. Proponents of intelligent design suggest that science educators “teach the controversy.” Their opponents suggest that proponents of intelligent design are engaged in “evolution denial.” These controversies are about the legitimacy of facts, but they are also about the structure of power in social fields. Who has the right to control knowledge?
Obama-mania
I discuss four claims that have been made about President Obama. None are proven which is why I select them, and perhaps each of them touches on issues of race at least indirectly, true for so many American rumors (Reference Fine and TurnerFine and Turner, 2001; Reference TurnerTurner, 1993). The absence of proof suggests to some a conspiracy to prevent knowledge from being spread, and to others suggests that the rumors are false, and perhaps, given their content and their target, that those who spread them are racist. In analyzing uncertain information, I put aside the pejorative readings of these claims, but address what it means to consider material for which a consensus can be challenged. As to whether any or all of them are disproven depends on what we mean by disproven. What is the basis of epistemology? The concept of the unproven must be addressed more directly by scholars of rumor and conspiracy.
The four claims that I consider are: first, Barack Obama is not a native-born American citizen, born in Kenya; second, that Barack Obama is a Muslim; third, that Barack Obama engaged in gay sex; and fourth, that Barack Obama is a socialist. Each of these claims and numerous others depend upon the active motivation of reputational entrepreneurs who believe that they speak to persuadable audiences and that their claims serve a useful public purpose. These reputational entrepreneurs have interests in making the claims stick or to challenge other claims. They gather resources to spread, to validate, or to contest these claims. I argue that the assessment of each of these four “rumors” depends on different types of truth claims. If they are false, they are false in different ways, and if the knowledge is uncertain that uncertainty depends on different conceptions of truth.
Negative history: Obama's birth
Unlike many nations in which genetics is destiny, in America, citizenship is, in part, based on the land itself: the place in which a child was born matters as much as who his parents are. A child born in Honolulu to two vacationing Kenyans is a natural-born American citizen and could be elected president. However, in contrast to claims made about President Obama, the legal consensus is that a child born abroad to an American citizen – in this case Obama's mother and a father who had resided in the United States – would still be considered a natural born citizen. A natural born citizen is a child who is a citizen at birth, no matter the location of his birth. In this sense the debate about Obama's birth location, while revealing cultural concerns, seems not legally relevant. The issue occasionally arises with presidential candidates who were born abroad as in the current case of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father.
Putting aside the question of whether it would matter were Barack Obama to be born in Kenya, the claim that Barack Obama was born outside the United States territorial limits and thus is an illegitimate President was so culturally salient that the proponents of the claim have been awarded their own name: Birthers, to some degree mirroring the Truthers who doubt the sanctioned 9/11 narrative. Why would this claim be made? If true, supporters believed – rightly or wrongly – that it raises the question of whether Barack Obama can legally serve as President. Given imagined legal uncertainty, this is an indirect means of suggesting that the election results must be overturned. The story has intuitive plausibility to some and elements of racism to others. But in order to have the story be a focus of discussion there needs to be some truth claims involved. Something must link to factual assertions.
Some websites have presented a string of Kenyan birth certificates. At least three different certificates can be found online. These photographs suggest the creativity of reputational entrepreneurs. It is highly likely – and I am tempted to say certain – that all of these documents with their different provenance are forgeries or fakes. I cannot prove this, but they lack plausibility, given the lack of institutional support, and because each one delegitimizes the others. But they exist because someone felt that they were worth producing. They remind us that some claims can be deliberate lies. Perhaps we cannot tell with certainty for any given case whether it is a lie, but we can tell that some are, as no more than one could possibly be true. Conspiracy theorists must find consensus, and in the absence of a single story, the account loses credibility.
But I wish to move beyond the world of intentional deceptions, such as those who knowingly create false birth certificates. Here we enter into what might be labeled negative history. This is the claim that the history that has been widely accepted is wrong, even if an alternative history is not proposed. The battle over what we know and what we don’t know involves facts present and facts absent. The latter is what we mean by negative history.
Consider briefly Holocaust denial. Proponents of this form of negative history suggest that there is no “smoking gun” that demonstrates that Hitler intended to commit genocide and no signed paper that indicates that Hitler ordered extermination camps built or that Jews must be gassed. With only circumstantial evidence some continue to doubt.
Birthers pointed to absences in the historical record – at least until President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. I focus on the time previous to that release, the moment of rumor. What proof was there for a Hawaii birth? Hawaii requires a legal certificate of birth (the short form) that lacks the name of the hospital and the doctor, included in the “long-form” birth certificate. Who was the doctor? Where was the hospital? This absence of evidence only becomes necessary if one doubted the definitive claims of the state of Hawaii.
That President Obama did not reveal the long-form birth certificate at the time that the controversy was developing suggested several possibilities for those prone to conspiratorial thinking: he didn’t have one and wants to cover this reality up, that he believes that the issue is irrelevant and/or offensive, or that he has such a document and found the debate helpful in discrediting some critics. In other words, uncertain knowledge can potentially be strategic for those who are attacked.
What is crucial in this rumor claim is that it rests on a hegemony of facts. Credible facts, however defined, must back up the assertion. The belief is that these facts potentially exist. Ultimately those who spread the birther rumor had no facts on which to base their claims, but only could point to the absence of possibly relevant information. This, then, constitutes, the form of negative history: a history of absence that suggests a conspiracy to hide necessary facts. In time, the Obama administration became tired of the charade and released his long-form birth certificate. This quieted the debate, but some still question the new evidence, embracing a conspiracy.
Ambiguous knowledge: Obama's religion
The claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim has a somewhat different relationship to a set of facts than does the birther claim. Here the problem is not that there are too few facts, but rather it is unclear what those facts that do exist mean. In contrast to negative history, this involves ambiguous knowledge. What does it mean to “have” a religion, and who has the authority to make that claim? What is the basis of belief and belonging?
If I wished to claim that I am a Muslim what would I need in order to be persuasive in the face of doubts? Perhaps I could demonstrate that for 20 years I attended a mosque, where I was preached at by a fiery Imam who called for global jihad. One might reasonably say that if I sat in the mosque or contributed to its building fund I must believe. Yet, often people who attend church do so from communal affiliation, rather than a commitment to a set of faith-based ideals. Perhaps I wanted the approval of my friends and respect from my neighbors.
But suppose I asserted that I was a committed Muslim, would that be convincing? Perhaps it would if my audience was well-disposed to me or if the audience felt that I was the kind of person who might embrace the religion, given their beliefs of the characteristics of devout Muslims.
This is where President Obama stands in his claim that he is a Christian. His campaign website “Fight the Smears” asserted that Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. For years he attended Trinity Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago with his wife and daughters. Is that sufficient? Does this constitute certain knowledge? Or does it remain ambiguous?
Barack Obama was not always a committed Christian. His father and his stepfather were Muslims. His mother was unchurched. He attended a Muslim school in Indonesia and there is an Indonesian document, which so far as I know has not been accused of being a forgery, that categorizes him as Muslim.
This rumor has a somewhat different ontology than the claim that Obama was born in Kenya. One cannot be born in two places. However, having a religion is a more subtle matter. Can one be a Protestant and a Muslim simultaneously, or must one choose? We can accept the President at his word. That is what we do with friends and neighbors. We show deference to their identity claims. Or we could argue that President Obama has reasons for hiding his true beliefs (or perhaps his non-beliefs, as there are some who contend that he is, in his heart, agnostic or atheist). One could emphasize the fact that he no longer regularly attends church services, or one might suggest that the church that he did attend in Chicago was somewhere between Christian liberation theology and the beliefs of the Nation of Islam. However, any claim that might be made, looking into a heart or soul, always involves uncertain knowledge. So it is hard to accept the claim as empirical fact that Barack Obama is a Muslim, but it is easier to accept a perspective that in his childhood he was a Muslim in the way that children become what their parents say and further that his commitment as a devout believer is not deep.
Ultimately the question that should attract scholars of conspiratorial belief is how do we know whether someone holds beliefs that they claim? The issue is different than that of negative history, but is fundamentally how can we determine whether internal beliefs are what they are claimed? Internal beliefs are by their very nature opaque and, thus, constitute uncertain knowledge.
Motivated claims: Obama's sexuality
When we excavate the past – a past in which there is not a lengthy or legitimated written trail – how should we determine what to believe. Individuals can appear who may have reasons to present motivated claims. These are assertions that are tinged by self-interest: claims designed to make a point and shape a reputation. This is surely the case with regard to assertions about Obama's years as a young adult. Some claimants assert that they knew Barack Obama as a student at Columbia University when he sold heroin, even to children. Such a claim stands or falls on its plausibility, but it lacks empirical support separate from what the proponent might assert. If the stakes are sufficiently high, anyone can say anything, and in a community in which public figures cannot easily charge slander, the legal costs are low. Should we judge the validity of the claim by examining the teller's motive?
So consider the claim that Barack Obama snorted cocaine and had sexual relations with a gay man (Reference SinclairSinclair, 2009). Should we make anything of this? Perhaps not. But if we make this choice, we make it because we feel that on a prima facie basis the claim serves an interest, separate from broadening the historical record. A claimant is willing to go public with the story, placing his reputation at some measure of risk. Of course in American culture and elsewhere television shows thrive because many people are willing to place their reputations at risk in the name of fame, however stained or fleeting that fame might be. Often we cannot independently judge the truth of the claim and perhaps being entertained, we don’t much care, or perhaps, most likely, we expect the claimant to provide independent evidence. It is not that the speaker doesn’t present claims; it is simply that these claims are linked to the claimant's self-interest.
As a result, Mr. Sinclair's claim of gay sex is distinct from previous claims. For here is an account for which the president has no defense, other than the defense, which he cannot prove, that it didn’t happen or that the person who makes the claim does not have the moral stature to make the claim.
In such a case, the claim is not supported by a web of supportive facts, and lacking those facts it falls until we know why the claim is presented. But there is another element at work that is connected to interpretation of uncertain knowledge, and that is whether the account fits our cognitive models. The claim of cocaine use is almost too easy for a politician who has previously admitted drug use. And so in this case we confront the sexual claim. There are numerous sketchy beliefs that opponents are willing – almost eager – to accept about Barack Obama, but the claim of homosexuality hasn’t been one of them. Perhaps, as with so much Obamiana, our reaction to the claim has a tinge of racism as it may not seem plausible because of the weight of stereotypes about black sexuality. We recognize from the claims that President Obama is a Kenyan or a Muslim that it doesn’t take much to generate belief, but it does take something. Perhaps it is the president's family life that makes the story incredible or perhaps it is the racist belief that African-Americans are hyper-sexual. The Obama campaign website “Fight the Smears” finds 28 smears to debunk. However, this is not one of them. Perhaps they cannot debunk it, but it is more likely the Team Obama considers this so far outside public notice that they feel that any response will spread it further. Without independent facts and without a public primed to believe, it falls by its own weight.
Uncertain interpretation: Obama's ideology
The final example – Obama's socialism – differs from the others in that the claim is less a question of fact than it is a question of opinion. It involves an uncertain interpretation. Some claim that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate, an agent of a foreign power, but like the previous example these are rarely referenced. Similarly, the argument that Obama is a member of the Communist Party is not embraced by many. Outside of bizarre and extremist domains such claims are not taken seriously. In practice, this is not uncertain knowledge, because no one treats it as knowledge.
In contrast is the often heard contention that Barack Obama is a socialist. This is a complicated claim for a number of reasons. The first parallels the claim of Obama's religion. Over the course of a life people change their political perspectives. There is a famous saying that perhaps originated with President John Adams, and has subsequently been attributed to many others, that suggests in its current form that “anyone who is not a liberal at twenty has no heart, and anyone who is not a conservative at forty has no brain.” We expect political beliefs to evolve over a lifespan. A communist at 20 could become a libertarian at 50.
The underlying question is what does it mean to be a “socialist” in the contemporary American context? Words often have contentious and disputed meanings. What beliefs do socialists hold and to whom is their allegiance? Within the American context that being a socialist is simply a “bad person”, socialist is a pejorative term without much concrete meaning. Such would not be the case in France with its different political history and its governing socialist party.
Reputational entrepreneurs – those who attempt to shape reputations – select labels that they feel are intuitively plausible for their chosen audience. Socialist is a label for a politician who wishes to extend the size and scope of government, even if it has no connection with the State owning the means of industrial production. Barack Obama's most fervent opponents admit that he has made no attempt to have government own private business, even if privately owned business must cope with increased governmental regulation. Under President Obama's watch the wealthy have fared well indeed. Perhaps the single-payer health care system that Senator Obama once claimed that he favored and subsequently backed away from comes closest to a socialist nostrum in which the government directly organizes and shapes a large segment of the economy. Still, a president – any president – takes so many diverse stances that it is possible to create a reputation that seems plausible in light of the general reputational themes established by opponents.
Is Barack Obama a socialist? It is not that the question is unanswerable. It is entirely answerable. It is simply that until there is an agreed upon definition as to what it means to be a socialist, there is no agreement on what constitutes the proper definition of the label. Answers exist, but not consensus. The interpretation is uncertain, even if the knowledge on which the interpretation is based is certain. The claim is more designed to shape a reputation than to designate a political perspective. As such, it stands outside of a regime of truth.
Promiscuous facts and uncertain knowledge
The world is filled with so many truth claims that a wide range of beliefs can follow from these claims. I speak of promiscuous facts, but ultimately a fact is simply a claim that a population believes has a direct and secure connection to empirical reality. Fortunately, in most cases the consensus is substantial, and so those who lack direct knowledge can judge whether the earth is spherical, resting comfortably knowing that few will roil the waters of belief. Much of what we know is secondhand, but is, for all practical purposes, secure.
This article explores uncertainty. These are either claims that are up-for-grabs with groups fighting over their legitimacy or claims that are unlikely, again as judged by groups that serve as gatekeepers to knowledge. Without direct access, we ask gatekeepers to parse our knowledge.
Sometimes the process works, but at other times it misleads. It is here that forgetting and ignorance become relevant. Forgetting is not the opposite of memory, but rather memory is the precursor to forgetting. One cannot forget something that hasn’t been known previously. Knowledge needs a sponsor to avoid being forgotten. Often this sponsor is an educational institution, but it could be popular culture or familial or communal tradition. Information that is forgotten may differ in its retrievability (Reference SchudsonSchudson, 1989): it could be information found in a library or on a website or it could be information that had once been held in personal memory. The information is fragile, and what was once fairly certain and sanctioned by experts, such as the dangers of a coming ice age, can be replaced by the dangers of global warming. The dangers of margarine can be replaced with the dangers of butter, which can then be replaced by the dangers of trans-fat. Old truths, once certain knowledge, can decay, lacking a recognized sponsor. When a rumor or political claim no longer serves a purpose it can fade, such as the claims about George W. Bush's DUI arrest, prominent in the final week of the 2000 presidential campaign. One imagines that by 2017, if not before, the Barack Obama claims, those that are true and those that are not, will also fade away.
Knowledge when forgotten for a sufficient period can become ignorance. I have emphasized that knowledge requires a credentialed sponsor. Lacking a sponsor, orphaned knowledge is at risk. Ignorance can serve the purpose of various actors. The examination of this process is what we mean by agnotology. Societies police the boundaries of what should be known.
Knowledge involves a truth claim made by particular actors and judged by others. It is embedded within a social field, and it is connected to domains of power. Some knowledge is true for all practical purposes; other knowledge is doubtful or even false, again for all practical purposes. Our concern as purveyors of practical epistemology must be knowledge that is in play or under debate – what I describe as uncertain knowledge. The beliefs about Barack Obama that I reference are far from certain. But whether they count as uncertain knowledge results from the relationship of their claimants to authorities that are treated as having access to the truth. Claims are easy to make, but whether they hold depends on community standards. As such, certain knowledge is a claim that stands stoutly defended.
