Download or read book Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History 2 Volumes written by Christopher R. Fee and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 1. Business and financial conspiracies and conspiracy theories -- Military and intelligence conspiracies and conspiracy theories -- Political conspiracies and conspiracy theories -- Popular culture conspiracies and conspiracy theories -- Science and technology conspiracies and conspiracy theories -- Social conspiracies and conspiracy theories.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theories in American History 2 volumes written by Peter Knight and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-11 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in the United States. Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive, research-based, scholarly study of the pervasiveness of our deeply ingrained culture of conspiracy. From the Puritan witch trials to the Masons, from the Red Scare to Watergate, Whitewater, and the War on Terror, this encyclopedia covers conspiracy theories across the breadth of U.S. history, examining the individuals, organizations, and ideas behind them. Its over 300 alphabetical entries cover both the documented records of actual conspiracies and the cultural and political significance of specific conspiracy speculations. Neither promoting nor dismissing any theory, the entries move beyond the usual biased rhetoric to provide a clear-sighted, dispassionate look at each conspiracy (real or imagined). Readers will come to understand the political and social contexts in which these theories arose, the mindsets and motivations of the people promoting them, the real impact of society's reactions to conspiracy fears, warranted or not, and the verdict (when verifiable) that history has passed on each case.
Download or read book Conspiracies of Conspiracies written by Thomas Milan Konda and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s tempting to think that we live in an unprecedentedly fertile age for conspiracy theories, with seemingly each churn of the news cycle bringing fresh manifestations of large-scale paranoia. But the sad fact is that these narratives of suspicion—and the delusional psychologies that fuel them—have been a constant presence in American life for nearly as long as there’s been an America. In this sweeping book, Thomas Milan Konda traces the country’s obsession with conspiratorial thought from the early days of the republic to our own anxious moment. Conspiracies of Conspiracies details centuries of sinister speculations—from antisemitism and anti-Catholicism to UFOs and reptilian humanoids—and their often incendiary outcomes. Rather than simply rehashing the surface eccentricities of such theories, Konda draws from his unprecedented assemblage of conspiratorial writing to crack open the mindsets that lead people toward these self-sealing worlds of denial. What is distinctively American about these theories, he argues, is not simply our country’s homegrown obsession with them but their ongoing prevalence and virulence. Konda proves that conspiracy theories are no harmless sideshow. They are instead the dark and secret heart of American political history—one that is poisoning the bloodstream of an increasingly sick body politic.
Download or read book Real Enemies written by Kathryn S. Olmsted and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.
Download or read book Europe Continent of Conspiracies written by Andreas Önnerfors and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geopolitical entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space. Focusing on recent developments, the individual chapters explore a range of conspiratorial positions related to Europe. In the current climate of fear and threat, new and old imaginaries of conspiracies such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have been mobilised. A dystopian or even apocalyptic image of Europe in terminal decline is evoked in Eastern European and particularly by Russian pro-Kremlin media, while the EU emerges as a screen upon which several narratives of conspiracy are projected trans-nationally, ranging from the Greek debt crisis to migration, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodological perspectives applied in this volume range from qualitative discourse and media analysis to quantitative social-psychological approaches, and there are a number of national and transnational case studies. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of extremism, conspiracy theories and European politics.
Download or read book The Nature of Conspiracy Theories written by Michael Butter and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones – that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened. But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world? In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.
Download or read book Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History 2 volumes written by Christopher R. Fee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions. Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations. These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theory in America written by Lance deHaven-Smith and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asserts that 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.
Download or read book Conspiracy Encyclopedia written by Thom Burnett and published by Franz Steiner Verlag. This book was released on 2006 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracies are everywhere. they are the lifeblood of politics, business and our daily lives. this truly international and all-embracing encyclopedia explains the details of the world's major popular conspiracies, listing them chronologically under subject matter and cross-referencing them continually (because so many conspiracy theories interact on some level). Conspiracies are often international in their sweep and their impact. the brutal stabbing of Julius Caesar (the conspiracy which has defined political assassinations ever since) plunged the Roman Empire into civil war, which then engulfed much of the known western world. More recently the Cambridge spies (Philby, Blunt, MacLean and Burgess) helped Russia throughout WWII and then re-defined the Cold War afterwards, Philby's defection casting a 30-year shadow over CIA/Anglo-American relations. though conspiracies define our everyday lives, there is no body of serious academic research to understand their role, nature or defining characteristics. Most historians prefer to adhere to the cock-up theory of history, in which everything happens by accident or incompetence. Although this view is favoured by academics and historians, it is rejected by a large part of the general public who prefer the evidence of their own lives. However they consume their media, what they see is a mesh of conspiracies that define the texture of their everyday lives, often for the worst. Most people believe that there is a grain of truth in most theories about conspiracies. this book is for them.
Download or read book Plots Designs and Schemes written by Michael Butter and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plots, Designs, and Schemes is the first study that investigates the long history of American conspiracy theories from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. Since research in these fields has so far almost exclusively focused on the contemporary period, the book concentrates on the time before 1960. Four detailed case studies offer close readings of the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, fears of Catholic invasion during the 1830s to 1850s, antebellum conspiracy theories about slavery, and anxieties about Communist subversion during the 1950s. The study primarily engages with factual texts, such as sermons, pamphlets, political speeches, and confessional narratives, but it also analyzes how fears of conspiracy were dramatized and negotiated in fictional texts, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835) or Hermann Melville's Benito Cereno (1855). The book offers three central insights: 1. The American predilection for conspiracy theorizing can be traced back to the co-presence and persistence of a specific epistemological paradigm that relates all effects to intentional human action, the ideology of republicanism, and the Puritan heritage. 2. Until far into the twentieth century, conspiracy theories were considered a perfectly legitimate form of knowledge. As such, they shaped how many Americans, elites as well as “common” people, understood and reacted to historical events. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War would not have occurred without widespread conspiracy theories. 3. Although most extant research claims the opposite, conspiracy theories have never been as marginal and unimportant as in the past decades. Their disqualification as stigmatized knowledge only occurred around 1960, and coincided with a shift from theories that detect conspiracies directed against the government to conspiracies by the government.
Download or read book The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies written by William Hanchett and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1989-01-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the many theories that have led to speculation that Lincoln's assassination was a conspiracy.
Download or read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique written by Kurtis Hagen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-07-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique argues that conspiracy theories, including those that conflict with official accounts and suggest that prominent people in Western democracies have engaged in appalling behavior, should be taken seriously and judged on their merits and problems on a case-by-case basis. It builds on the philosophical work on this topic that has developed over the past quarter century, challenging some of it, but affirming the emerging consensus: each conspiracy theory ought to be judged on its particular merits and faults. The philosophical consensus contrasts starkly with what one finds in the social science literature. Kurtis Hagen argues that significant aspects of that literature, especially the psychological study of conspiracy theorists, has turned out to be flawed and misleading. Those flaws are not randomly directed; rather, they consistently serve to disparage conspiracy theorists unfairly. This suggests that there may be a bias against conspiracy theorists in the academy, skewing “scientific” results. Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique argues that social scientists who study conspiracy theories and/or conspiracy theorists would do well to better absorb the implications of the philosophical literature.
Download or read book The Big Book of Conspiracies written by Doug Moench and published by Dc Comics. This book was released on 1995 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an Introduction by Rev. Ian Stang of the Church of the Subgenius Compiled by Doug Moench and 39 of the world's top comic artists, this collection presents some of the world's weirdest conspiracy theories. Did the Nazi Party help form the CIA? Did aliens form the Nazi Party? Are descendants of Jesus living in France? Is Jim Morrison still alive? The answers to these questions and many more may be found inside this book - or then again not.
Download or read book A Culture of Conspiracy written by Michael Barkun and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unravelling the genealogies and permutations of conspiracist worldviews, this work shows how this web of urban legends has spread among sub-cultures on the Internet and through mass media, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature written by Victoria Emma Pagán and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracy theory as a theoretical framework has emerged only in the last twenty years; commentators are finding it a productive way to explain the actions and thoughts of individuals and societies. In this compelling exploration of Latin literature, Pagán uses conspiracy theory to illuminate the ways that elite Romans invoked conspiracy as they navigated the hierarchies, divisions, and inequalities in their society. By seeming to uncover conspiracy everywhere, Romans could find the need to crush slave revolts, punish rivals with death or exile, dismiss women, denigrate foreigners, or view their emperors with deep suspicion. Expanding on her earlier Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History, Pagán here interprets the works of poets, satirists, historians, and orators—Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, Terence, and Cicero, among others—to reveal how each writer gave voice to fictional or real actors who were engaged in intrigue and motivated by a calculating worldview. Delving into multiple genres, Pagán offers a powerful critique of how conspiracy and conspiracy theory can take hold and thrive when rumor, fear, and secrecy become routine methods of interpreting (and often distorting) past and current events. In Roman society, where knowledge about others was often lacking and stereotypes dominated, conspiracy theory explained how the world worked. The persistence of conspiracy theory, from antiquity to the present day, attests to its potency as a mechanism for confronting the frailties of the human condition.
Download or read book Conspiracy Theories and the People who Believe Them written by Joseph E. Uscinski and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracy theories are inevitable in complex human societies. And while they have always been with us, their ubiquity in our political discourse is nearly unprecedented. Their salience has increased for a variety of reasons including the increasing access to information among ordinary people, a pervasive sense of powerlessness among those same people, and a widespread distrust of elites. Working in combination, these factors and many other factors are now propelling conspiracy theories into our public sphere on a vast scale. In recent years, scholars have begun to study this genuinely important phenomenon in a concerted way. In Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, Joseph E. Uscinski has gathered forty top researchers on the topic to provide both the foundational tools and the evidence to better understand conspiracy theories in the United States and around the world. Each chapter is informed by three core questions: Why do so many people believe in conspiracy theories? What are the effects of such theories when they take hold in the public? What can or should be done about the phenomenon? Combining systematic analysis and cutting-edge empirical research, this volume will help us better understand an extremely important, yet relatively neglected, phenomenon.
