This perfectly captures a key flaw with so many discussions of conspiracy theories, and indeed with Conspiracy Theories. For example, if you can believe that a small group of people is controlling everything, it can be easier to understand why things are the way they are.

When Barkun was writing around the turn of the millennium, apocalyptic fervor had gripped both the extremist fringe and the mainstream population; Barkun saw how this yearning for some kind of End Times was sliding into conspiracy theory and paranoia and offered a roadmap for understanding our current paranoid moment. The Nordic countries have traditionally imagined themselves as stable, wealthy, egalitarian welfare states. Conspiracy Theory in America investigates how the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct—articulated in the Declaration of Independence—has been replaced by today’s blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. Theory Conspiracy provides a state-of-the-art collection that takes stage on the meeting and/or battlegrounds between conspiracy theory and theory-asconspiracy.Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition. The novel concerns a spoof conspiracy theory, “the Plan”, created by three publishers who find their invention has gained a mysterious life of its own. The idea that the elites may actually believe the conspiracy theories they propagate is too often overlooked. From crosswords and counting conundrums to spot the differences and sudoku, whether you’re a sceptic or a self-confessed conspiracy obsessive, there’s plenty in these pages to sharpen your mind and have you believing the impossible.

We really don’t have anything like this in terms of a focused, sympathetic, open-minded ethnographic study of UFO experiencers. Though we may think conspiracy theories appeal only to the naïve or uneducated, Shermer dispels that myth, showing how pervasive they really are.A couple of decades, a BCALA literary award, and a three-book deal later, my wild imagination has grown into a passion for exposing the truth. This book delves into the history and alleged influence of the Illuminati, a secret society that apparently controls world events and manipulates governments behind the scenes. There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions.

Michael Shermer (SANTA BARBARA, CA) is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, the host of the popular podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and the Skeptic Substack weekly columnist.

Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory.

A secretive postal system – the Tristero, with mailboxes disguised as rubbish bins that display the mysterious slogan W. It fights to suppress the “Jes Grew” virus, a feverish dance of jazz and freedom spread by certain black artists (“Jes Grew that touched John Coltrane’s tenor; that tinged the voice of Otis Redding”).Long a fringe part of the American political landscape, conspiracy theories are now mainstream: 147 members of Congress voted in favor of objections to the 2020 presidential election based on an unproven theory about a rigged electoral process promoted by the mysterious group QAnon.