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Conspiracy theory
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A conspiracy theory alleges a coordinated group is, or was, secretly working to commit illegal or wrongful actions, including attempting to hide the existence of the group and its activities. In notable cases these theories contrast what is represented by the mainstream explanation for historical or current events, as well as the evidence that supports it.
term "conspiracy theory" may be a neutral descriptor for any conspiracy claim.
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Encyclopedia
A conspiracy theory alleges a coordinated group is, or was, secretly working to commit illegal or wrongful actions, including attempting to hide the existence of the group and its activities. In notable cases these theories contrast what is represented by the mainstream explanation for historical or current events, as well as the evidence that supports it.
Terminology
The term "conspiracy theory" may be a neutral descriptor for any conspiracy claim. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end." However, conspiracy theory is also used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies.
The word "theory" is in this usage is informal as in "speculation" or "hypothesis" rather than scientific. Also, the term conspiracy is typically used to indicate powerful figures, often of the establishment, who are believed to be deceiving the population at large. Although some conspiracies are not actually theories, they are often labeled as such by the general populous.
The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates from 1909. Originally it was a neutral term but during the political upheaval of the 1960s it acquired its current derogatory sense. It entered the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary as late as 1997.
The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power or money from "the people". Less illustrious uses refer to folklore and urban legend and a variety of explanatory narratives which are constructed with methodological flaws. The term is also used in a pejorative sense to automatically dismiss claims that are deemed ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational. For example, the term "Watergate conspiracy theory" refers to the darker aspects of the assorted events connected to that burglary at the Watergate, not the generally accepted version in which several participants actually were convicted of conspiracy, and others pardoned before any charges were filed. The darker version proposes alternative and additional theories positing that the source(s) of information called "Deep Throat" was a fabrication .
Daniel Pipes, in an early essay "adapted from a study prepared for the CIA", attempted to define which beliefs distinguish 'the conspiracy mentality' from 'more conventional patterns of thought'. He defined them as: appearances deceive; conspiracies drive history; nothing is haphazard; the enemy always gains power, fame, money, and sex .
Conspiracism
A world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history is sometimes termed "conspiracism". The historian Richard Hofstadter addressed the role of paranoia and conspiracism throughout American history in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, published in 1964. Bernard Bailyn's classic The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) notes that a similar phenomenon could be found in America during the time preceding the American Revolution. Conspiracism then labels people's attitudes as well as the type of conspiracy theories that are more global and historical in proportion. The term conspiracism was popularized by academic Frank P. Mintz in the 1980s. Academic work in conspiracy theories and conspiracism presents a range of hypotheses as a basis of studying the genre. Among the leading scholars of conspiracism are: Hofstadter, Karl Popper, Michael Barkun, Robert Alan Goldberg, Daniel Pipes, Mark Fenster, Mintz, Carl Sagan, George Johnson, and Gerald Posner.
According to Mintz, conspiracism denotes: "belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history":
"Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology".
Throughout human history, political and economic leaders genuinely have been the cause of enormous amounts of death and misery, and they sometimes have engaged in conspiracies while at the same time promoting conspiracy theories about their targets. Hitler and Stalin would be merely the most prominent examples; there have been numerous others. In some cases there have been claims dismissed as conspiracy theories that later proved to be true. (for examples, see "Proven historical conspiracies") The idea that history itself is controlled by large long-standing conspiracies is rejected by historian Bruce Cumings:
"But if conspiracies exist, they rarely move history; they make a difference at the margins from time to time, but with the unforeseen consequences of a logic outside the control of their authors: and this is what is wrong with 'conspiracy theory.' History is moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities."
The term conspiracism is used in the work of Michael Kelly, Chip Berlet, and Matthew N. Lyons.
According to Berlet and Lyons, "Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm".
Fusion paranoia
Michael Kelly, a Washington Post journalist and critic of anti-war movements on both the left and right, coined the term "fusion paranoia" to refer to a political convergence of left-wing and right-wing activists around anti-war issues and civil liberties, which he claimed were motivated by a shared belief in conspiracism or anti-government views.
Social critics have adopted this term to refer to how the synthesis of paranoid conspiracy theories, which were once limited to American fringe audiences, has given them mass appeal and enable them to become commonplace in mass media, thereby inaugurating an unrivaled popular culture of conspiracism in the U.S. of the late 20th and early 21st century. Some warn that this development in conspiracy theory may have negative effects on American political life, such as producerist demagogy and moral panic influencing elections as well as domestic and foreign policy.
Daniel Pipes, a Jerusalem Post journalist, wrote in the 2004 article Fusion paranoia--A new twist in conspiracy theories:
Fears of a petty conspiracy – a political rival or business competitor plotting to do you harm – are as old as the human psyche. But fears of a grand conspiracy – that the Illuminati or Jews plan to take over the world – go back only 900 years and have been operational for just two centuries, since the French Revolution. Conspiracy theories grew in importance from then until World War II, when two arch-conspiracy theorists, Hitler and Stalin, faced off against each other, causing the greatest blood-letting in human history. This hideous spectacle sobered Americans, who in subsequent decades relegated conspiracy theories to the fringe, where mainly two groups promoted such ideas. The politically disaffected: Blacks (Louis Farrakhan, Cynthia McKinney), the hard Right (John Birch Society, Pat Buchanan), and other alienated elements (Ross Perot, Lyndon LaRouche). Their theories imply a political agenda, but lack much of a following. The culturally suspicious: These include "Kennedy assassinologists," "ufologists," and those who believe a reptilian race runs the earth and alien installations exist under the earth's surface. Such themes enjoy enormous popularity (a year 2000 poll found 43 percent of Americans believing in UFOs), but carry no political agenda. The major new development, reports Barkun, professor of political science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is not just an erosion in the divisions between these two groups, but their joining forces with occultists, persons bored by rationalism. Occultists are drawn to what Barkun calls the "cultural dumping ground of the heretical, the scandalous, the unfashionable, and the dangerous" – such as spiritualism, Theosophy, alternative medicine, alchemy, and astrology. Thus, the author who worries about the Secret Service taking orders from the Bavarian Illuminati is old school; the one who worries about a "joint Reptilian-Bavarian Illuminati" takeover is at the cutting edge of the new synthesis. These bizarre notions constitute what the late Michael Kelly termed "fusion paranoia," a promiscuous absorption of fears from any source whatsoever.
Criticism
Conspiracy theories are the subject of broad critique by academics, politicians, and the media.
Validity
Perhaps the most contentious aspect of a conspiracy theory is the problem of settling a particular theory's truth to the satisfaction of both its proponents and its opponents. Particular accusations of conspiracy vary widely in their plausibility, but some common standards for assessing their likely truth value may be applied in each case :
- Occam's razor - does the alternative story explain more of the evidence than the mainstream story, or is it just a more complicated and therefore less useful explanation of the same evidence?
- Logic - Do the proofs offered follow the rules of logic, or do they employ Fallacies of logic?
- Methodology - are the proofs offered for the argument well constructed, i.e., using sound methodology? Is there any clear standard to determine what evidence would prove or disprove the theory?
- Whistleblowers - how many people — and what kind — have to be loyal conspirators?
- Falsifiability - Is it possible to demonstrate that specific claims of the theory are false, or are they "unfalsifiable"?
The US academic Noam Chomsky contrasts conspiracy theory as more or less the opposite of institutional analysis, which focuses mostly on the public, long-term behaviour of publicly known institutions, as recorded in, e.g. scholarly documents or mainstream media reports, rather than secretive coalitions of individuals.
Controversy
Aside from controversies over the merits of particular conspiracy claims (see catalog below), the general discussion of conspiracy theory is itself a matter of some public contention.
Usage
The term "conspiracy theory" is considered by different observers to be a neutral description for a conspiracy claim, a pejorative term used to dismiss such a claim without examination, and a term that can be positively embraced by proponents of such a claim. The term may be used by some for arguments they might not wholly believe but consider radical and exciting. The most widely accepted sense of the term is that which popular culture and academic usage share, certainly having negative implications for a narrative's probable truth value.
Given this popular understanding of the term, it can also be used illegitimately and inappropriately, as a means to dismiss what are in fact substantial and well-evidenced accusations. The legitimacy of each such usage will therefore be a matter of some controversy. Michael Parenti, in his 1996 essay which examines the role of progressive media in the use of the term, "The JFK Assassination II: Conspiracy Phobia On The Left", states,
- "It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a 'conspiracist' who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces."
Certain proponents of conspiracy claims and their supporters argue that the term is entirely illegitimate, and should be considered just as politically manipulative as the Soviet practice of treating political dissidents as clinically insane.
But critics of this view claim that the argument bears little weight and that the claim itself serves to expose the paranoia common with conspiracy theorists. A similar complication occurs for terms such as UFO, which literally means "unidentified flying object" but connotes alien spacecraft, a concept also associated with some conspiracy theories, and thus possessing a certain social stigma. Michael Parenti gives an example of the use of the term which underscores the conflict in its use. He states,
- "In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy."
The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the object of a type of conspiracy theory, which argues that those using the term are manipulating their audience to disregard the topic under discussion, either in a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth, or as dupes of more deliberate conspirators.
When conspiracy theories are offered as official claims (e.g. originating from a governmental authority, such as an intelligence agency) they are not usually considered as conspiracy theories. For example, certain activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee may be considered to have been an official attempt to promote a conspiracy theory, yet its claims are seldom referred to as such.
Further difficulties arise from ambiguity regarding the term theory. In popular usage, this term is often used to refer to unfounded or weakly-based speculation, leading to the idea that "It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true".
Proven historical conspiracies
Despite the speculative nature of many conspiracy theories,
mainstream world history contains numerous proven conspiracies,
some of which were not the subject of any widespread speculation
until they were exposed. Historical conspiracies include:
- The Catiline conspiracies in the first century BC.
- A group of Roman senators, calling itself the Liberatores, hoped to restore the Roman Republic by killing Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
- The Pisonian conspiracy AD 65.
- The Pazzi conspiracy, which included the Pope, of the late 1400s.
- The Main Plot of 1603
- The Bye Plot of 1603
- The Gunpowder Plot of 1605
- The Anjala conspiracy of 1788
- The conspiracy of 1865 to assassinate U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet
- The French government's attempted cover-up following Emile Zola's accusations in the Dreyfus Affair, starting in 1894.
- The 1903 efforts by the Tsar's secret police to foment anti-Semitism by presenting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic text.
- The 1939 Operation Himmler and its Gleiwitz incident
- Operation Mockingbird, from 1948. In 1976, then CIA director George H. W. Bush ordered that paid media recruiting would be prohibited.
- The 1945 Operation Paperclip, the extraction of top Nazi scientists.
- The MKULTRA mind control program, from 1953 to late 1960s
- The 1954 Lavon affair
- The 1962 Operation Northwoods
- The 1969 Manson Family murders
- The 1972 Watergate burglary and cover-up scandals
- The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
- The 1987 Iran-Contra Affair
- The 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
- The Enron manipulation of the California Electricity Market during the California electricity crisis
- the Mafia
- the Business Plot to overthrow the U.S. government led at the time by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933
- various CIA involvements in overseas coups d'état
- the 1991 Testimony of Nayirah before the U.S. Congress to rally the support of the U.S. public to launch the Gulf War
- the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male
- the General Motors streetcar conspiracy
- the plot by some gaullists of the French Secret Service to destabilise future president Georges Pompidou, known as the Markovic affair
- the series of incidents in Italy connected to the so called "strategy of tension"
- Operation Gladio
Study of conspiracism
In 1936 American commentator H. L. Mencken wrote:
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy.
Belief in conspiracy theories has become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy eventually provoked an unprecedented public response directed against the official version of the case as expounded in the Report of the Warren Commission.
Psychological origins
According to some psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory tends to believe in others; a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory tends not to believe another.
This may be caused by differences in the information upon which parties rely in formulating their conclusions.
Psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories, and may be powerful enough alone to lead to the first formulating of the idea. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part.
Some research carried out at the University of Kent, UK suggests people may be influenced by conspiracy theories without being aware that their attitudes have changed. After reading popular conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, participants in this study correctly estimated how much their peers' attitudes had changed, but significantly underestimated how much their own attitudes had changed to become more in favour of the conspiracy theories. The authors conclude that conspiracy theories may therefore have a 'hidden power' to influence people's beliefs.
Projection
Some historians have argued that there is an element of psychological projection in conspiracism. This projection, according to the argument, is manifested in the form of attribution of undesirable characteristics of the self to the conspirators. Richard Hofstadter, in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, stated that:
...it is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship... the Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through "front" groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist "crusades" openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.
Hofstadter also noted that "sexual freedom" is a vice frequently attributed to the conspiracist's target group, noting that "very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments."
Epistemic bias
It is possible that certain basic human epistemic biases are projected onto the material under scrutiny. According to one study humans apply a 'rule of thumb' by which we expect a significant event to have a significant cause. The study offered subjects four versions of events, in which a foreign president was (a) successfully assassinated, (b) wounded but survived, (c) survived with wounds but died of a heart attack at a later date, and (d) was unharmed. Subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of the 'major events' — in which the president died — than in the other cases, despite all other evidence available to them being equal.
Another epistemic 'rule of thumb' that can be misapplied to a mystery involving other humans is cui bono? (who stands to gain?). This sensitivity to the hidden motives of other people may be an evolved and universal feature of human consciousness. However, this is also a valid rule of thumb for detectives to use when generating a list of suspects to investigate. Used in this way "Who had the motive, means and opportunity?" is a perfectly valid use of this rule of thumb.
Clinical psychology
For relatively rare individuals, an obsessive compulsion to believe, prove or re-tell a conspiracy theory may indicate one or more of several well-understood psychological conditions, and other hypothetical ones: paranoia, denial, schizophrenia, mean world syndrome.
Socio-political origins
Christopher Hitchens represents conspiracy theories as the 'exhaust fumes of democracy', the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people. Other social commentators and sociologists argue that conspiracy theories are produced according to variables that may change within a democratic (or other type of) society.
Conspiratorial accounts can be emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to assign moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation to a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer. The believer may then feel excused of any moral or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the actual source of the dissonance.
Where responsible behavior is prevented by social conditions, or is simply beyond the ability of an individual, the conspiracy theory facilitates the emotional discharge or closure that such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman) require. Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities that are experiencing social isolation or political dis-empowerment.
Mark Fenster argues that "just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean they are not on to something. Specifically, they ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm" (1999: 67).
Sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations for the origins of World War I:
- Those events that are most important are hardest to understand, because they attract the greatest attention from myth makers and charlatans.
This normal process could be diverted by a number of influences. At the level of the individual, pressing psychological needs may influence the process, and certain of our universal mental tools may impose epistemic 'blind spots'. At the group or sociological level, historic factors may make the process of assigning satisfactory meanings more or less problematic.
Alternatively, conspiracy theories may arise when evidence available in the public record does not correspond with the common or official version of events. In this regard, conspiracy theories may sometimes serve to highlight 'blind spots' in the common or official interpretations of events (Fenster, 1999).
Media tropes
Media commentators regularly note a tendency in news media and wider culture to understand events through the prism of individual agents, as opposed to more complex structural or institutional accounts. If this is a true observation, it may be expected that the audience which both demands and consumes this emphasis itself is more receptive to personalized, dramatic accounts of social phenomena.
A second, perhaps related, media trope is the effort to allocate individual responsibility for negative events. The media have a tendency to start to seek culprits if an event occurs that is of such significance that it does not drop off the news agenda within a few days. Of this trend, it has been said that the concept of a pure accident is no longer permitted in a news item. Again, if this is a true observation, it may reflect a real change in how the media consumer perceives negative events.
Political use
In his two volume work The Open Society and Its Enemies Popper used the term "conspiracy theory" to criticize the ideologies driving fascism, Nazism and communism. Popper argued that totalitarianism was founded on "conspiracy theories" which drew on imaginary plots driven by paranoid scenarios predicated on tribalism, racism or classism. Popper did not argue against the existence of everyday conspiracies (as incorrectly suggested in much of the later literature). Popper even uses the term "conspiracy" to describe ordinary political activity in the classical Athens of Plato (who was the principal target of his attack in The Open Society & Its Enemies).
In his critique of Marx and the twentieth century totalitarians, Popper wrote, "I do not wish to imply that conspiracies never happen. On the contrary, they are typical social phenomena."
He reiterated his point, "Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in spite of their occurrence, disproved the conspiracy theory is that few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful. Conspirators rarely consummate their conspiracy."
Popper proposed the term "the conspiracy theory of society" to criticize the methodology of Marx, Hitler and others whom he deemed to be deluded by "historicism" - the reduction of history to an overt and naive distortion via a crude formulaic analysis usually predicated on an agenda replete with unsound presuppositions.
Examples
- Extraterrestrials are being hidden by governments either to preserve public order or as part of a deal between aliens and a secret government. The Robertson Panel guidelines are cited as government policy intended to ridicule people who have seen a flying saucer, aliens, or both. The "Secret Government" conspiracy is a major theme of the popular The X-Files TV show.
- 9/11 conspiracy theories, theories which attempt to explain what happened with the September 11, 2001 attacks, such as elements within the intelligence community committing a psychological warfare operation or to allow the US to attack Iraq in 'retaliation'.
- Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations.
- The John F. Kennedy assassination was an operation carried out by government officials and not Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Oliver Stone's film JFK is based on this premise.
- Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered at the behest of the United Kingdom intelligence community, or the British Royal Family, or the British Establishment, or a combination of all three.
- The New World Order theories claiming a powerful and secretive group plans to institute a one-world government.
- World domination by Jews, one of the oldest extant conspiracy theories (often incorporating various existing or historical secret societies and most major conspiracy theories)
- The Apollo Moon-Landing Hoax Theory suggests that some or all elements of the Apollo missions were faked by NASA.
- The theory of Satanic ritual abuse, a widespread belief that a conspiracy of child molesters and Satanists are engaging in child sexual abuse.
- The Paul is Dead theory, stating that Paul McCartney of The Beatles died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike while clues were hidden in songs and album cover art.
- The Death of Marilyn Monroe who died in 1962. There are rumours that Marilyn was actually murdered by the government to keep her from telling the world information she learned while having an apparent affair with U.S. President John F. Kennedy or that she was murdered by the mob to settle a score with the Kennedys.
- The death of US rapper Tupac Shakur is surrounded by many conspiracy theories that he is actually still alive and healthy.
- Many Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories assert that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, or that he somehow lost citizenship during his youth.
Fiction
Because of their dramatic potential, conspiracies are a popular theme in thrillers and science fiction. Complex history is recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people identify and defeat them. Fictional conspiracy theories offer neat, intuitive narratives, in which the conspirators' plot fits closely the dramatic needs of the story's plot. As mentioned above, the cui bono? aspect of conspiracy theories resembles one element of mystery stories: the search for a possibly hidden motive.
Dr. Strangelove was a 1964 comedy about modern nuclear warfare. The end of the world is precipitated by the delusions of General Jack D. Ripper who happens to be in control of a SAC nuclear air wing. General Ripper believes there is a Communist conspiracy which threatens to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water.
Conspiracy Theory is a 1997 thriller about a taxi driver (played by Mel Gibson) who publishes a newsletter in which he discusses what he suspects are government conspiracies, and it turns out that one or more of them are true.
The X-Files was a popular television show during the 1990s and early 2000s, which followed the investigations of two intrepid FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who were sometimes helped by a group of conspiracy theorists known as The Lone Gunmen. Many of the episodes dealt with a plot for alien invasion overseen by elements of the U.S. government, led by an individual known only as the Cigarette Smoking Man and an even more mysterious international "Syndicate". The famous tag line of the series, "The Truth Is Out There", can be interpreted as reference to the meaning-seeking nature of the genre discussed above.
Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum is a broad satire on conspiracism in which the characters attempt to construct an all-embracing conspiracy theory starting with the Templars and including the Bavarian Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, hollow Earth enthusiasts, the Cathars, and even the Jesuits.
The three-part novel Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (published in 1975) is a highly satirical, psychedelic novel dealing with complex, Byzantine conspiracies nested within other larger conspiracies--with the scale of the plots and the audacity of their plotters expanding to enfold more and more minds as the story progresses, evolving to wrap itself around many extant conspiracy theories such as the ones revolving around the Bavarian Illuminati, the Masons, the Vatican, the Mafia, governments large and small, and fringe groups of both left and right-wing persuasions. Their plottings merge with the overarching plans of several fictitious organizations--and also an actual "religion" which conceives of itself as a joke (the Discordians.) In an ironic twist of fate, Illuminatus! may have even caused the development of a real-world Discordian society (which manifests in loose clusters of affiliation, rather than as any formalized group) when the novel's cult success as a countercultural mainstay brought the "holy writ" of the Discordians, the Principia Discordia, out of obscurity over the final three decades of the twentieth century. Shea and Wilson used witty quotes drawn from this comedic pamphlet glorifying Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord, as opening lines for chapters of the Illuminatus! books.
The 2007 novel The Unreals, by Donald Jeffries provides a humorous look at numerous conspiracy theories. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, the Masons, government coverup of UFOs and related phenomena are just some of the areas covered. The various right wing and left wing theories are blended into a fictional search for the main character's grandfather, who has mysteriously disappeared.
See also
Concepts
Conspiracy theorists
The following people are known to have proposed conspiracy theories:
- Art Bell (born 1945) - American founder and longtime host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM.
- Jeff Rense - mainly UFO and 9-11 conspiracy theories
- Matthew Bellamy
- Peter Beter (1921 - 1987) - American lawyer and author who claimed that world events were being controlled by three factions, the Rockefeller family, the "Bolshevik-Zionist axis," and the Kremlin.
- Mae Brussell (1922 - 1988) - American conspiracy theorist and radio personality, focusing on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
- William Guy Carr (1895 - 1959) - Canadian naval officer and author responsible for creating the American Illuminati demonology.
- Jack T. Chick (born 1924) - American publisher of comic book-style tracts, known as Chick Tracts, often depicting conspiracy theories featuring Satan, the Catholic Church, Communists, Muslims, rock musicians, scientists, and politicians, as well as other groups and subjects behind popular entertainment, role-playing games, and other perceived ills of modern culture.
- James Shelby Downard (1913 - 1998) - American author who perceived occult symbolism, twilight language and synchronicity behind historical events in the 20th century.
- David Emory - American talk radio host who asserts that an obscure, sinister, organization called the "Underground Reich" maintains the interests of the German industry, banking and finance, which survived World War II as a major part of the global capital elite.
- Myron C. Fagan (1887 - 1972) - American writer, producer and director for film and theatre, who wrote and produced plays and pamphlets claiming the United Nations was a Communist front for one world government.
- Francis E. Dec (1926 - 1996) - Disbarred American lawyer from Hempstead, New York who is today known for having in the 1970s and 80s mass-mailed various rambling flyers and rants to randomly selected addressees all across the US, in which he purported to warn the public of an omnipotent machine-entity he referred to as the "World-wide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God."
- Des Griffin - American author espousing a right-wing Christian view of global conspiracies and the New World Order.
- Patrick Haseldine (born 1942) - former British diplomat, dismissed in 1989 by the Thatcher government for writing a His subsequent conspiracy theory seeking to incriminate apartheid South Africa over the 21 December 1988 Lockerbie bombing alleged that the aircraft was downed in order to assassinate Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia.
- Stanley Hilton - American lawyer who filed a subsequently dismissed $7-billion lawsuit against Bush Administration officials, accusing them of complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
- Richard Hoagland (born 1945) - American author whose books claim that advanced civilizations exist or once existed on the Moon and Mars, and NASA and the United States government are conspiring to keep this secret. Latest theories of this nature include the Jovian satellite Europa and what he claims killed the Columbia shuttle astronauts.
- Michael A. Hoffman II (born 1954) - American historian who posits conspiracies about Jewish control of the United States and about the Holocaust.
- Leonard G. Horowitz - American author, former dentist, who claimed in a book, Emerging Viruses, that HIV/AIDS was engineered by the U.S. as a biological warfare agent. Reportedly inspired Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to caution against vaccinating children; mentioned by Rev. Jeremiah Wright in support of Wright's similar claim.
- David Icke (born 1952) - British writer and public speaker who claims that the world is ruled by a secret group called the "Global Elite" or "Illuminati," which he has linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
- Alex Jones
- Timothy F. LaHaye (born 1926) - joint author, with Jerry F. Jenkins, of the Left Behind novels.
- Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. (born 1922) - American activist and self-styled politician whose publications rail against what he calls "Synarchism" and who, in spite of having received a felony conviction for mail fraud, has repeatedly sought election--thus far, without success--to the office of President of the United States.
- G. Edward Griffin
- Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde
- Jim Marrs
- Texe Marrs
- Ken McCarthy - Owns and operates via his consulting business. Massive provider of conspiracy content, videos and alternative news stories. Site named for Upton Sinclair's novel the Brass Check
- Thierry Meyssan
- Gary North
- Roberto Pinotti
- Lew Rockwell
- Christopher W. Ruddy
- Ben Stein (born 1944) - former Nixon speechwriter turned actor/game show host, whose movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" alleges a vast conspiracy among modern scientists to squelch evidence for creationism in order to promote atheism. He has also equated modern science with the eugenics movement and Nazi Germany. Stein has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for trivializing and mis-representing the origins of the Holocaust in order to further his conspiracy theories. Stein has responded to these criticisms by saying, "It's none of their fucking business."
- John A. Stormer
- Webster Tarpley
- Robert Anton Wilson
- Jerome Corsi
Further reading
- , Political Research Associates
- West, Harry G. and Todd Sanders (eds) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822330240
Conspiracist literature
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
- Balsiger, David W. and Charles E. Sellier, Jr. (1977). The Lincoln Conspiracy. Los Angeles: Schick Sun Classic Books. ISBN 1-56849-531-5
- Wilson, Robert Anton (2002). TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution, Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications. ISBN 1-56184-169-2
- Yallop, David A. (1984). In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I. New York: Bantam Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 0-553-05073-7
- York, Byron (2005). The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President - and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time. New York: Crown Forum. ISBN 1-4000-8238-2
- Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11, by Mathias Bröckers. Sees conspiracy as a fundamental principle between cooperation and competition. Proposes a new science of "conspirology."
External links
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