  The Village Voice follows up there article on conspiracy culture with this urlLink one . The article makes several good points: In an introductory essay, Peter Knight, editor of the 2002 collection Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America, attributes modern conspiracism to "the pervading sense of uncontrollable forces taking over our lives, our minds, and even our bodies.
" This just good ole alienation as explained by Marx. The article actually mentions several Marxists (Jameson, Althusser, etc) but does not mention the original thinker himself. I am far from an expert on Marxist thought, but I find that progressives use a lot of the ideas he came up without giving him credit. This is a shame. I understand that during the Cold War attributing anything good to Marx was verboten, but now may be the time to revive a popular interest in the Marxist critique.
Of course there have been a gazillion offshoots from Marxist thought, but nonetheless it is important for leftist activists to understand the original work. This helps to develop a frame for analyzing the world and understanding social phenomenon. The reason I make this point is that progressive activists (though not necessarily progressive thinkers) desparately need a tool for interpreting and acting on political, economic, and cultural events. Too often progressives are deeply fragmented and issue-focused rather than ideology focused. A an independent thinker I dislike ideology as much as anyone. However, we must understand that politics deals with the uncomfortable realities of the current historical moment. These must be addressed strategically with a view to the long term. Frequently this requires doing things that many progressives dislike: message packaging (PR, advertising, etc) simplistic solutions sound bites etc...
In short progressives must embrace the use of political technology. They have not done so in a serious manner since at least the Civil Rights movement and even then there were very serious flaws in the leadership (most notably the way black women were occasionally treated, this is still true in black culture as evidences by hip-hop culture). The most important point I want to make in this blog is the progressives must not make the perfect the enemy of the good .
However, political technology is not philosophically neutral. Techne and philosophy are linked and inseparable. The question for progressives is how do we use political technology in a way that does not undermine longer term goals but at the same time is still effective against the RadCon political machine that has come to dominate the US. 
