Conspiracy Theories: A Guide to the World's Most Intriguing Mysteries

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What the last few years have taught us, unfortunately, is that conspiratorial thinking runs much deeper and wider through our culture, and it takes more than just wishful thinking to defeat.

As such, while Conspiracy Theories is an interesting, expansive study of conspiracy theories, it is ultimately incomplete.This handbook examines where conspiracy theories come from, who believes in them and what their consequences are. When a routine check turns violent, a reputable police officer does the unthinkable, and even worse, his brothers in blue follow suit, leaving the heroine trapped between telling the truth or staying alive.

I can see what the reviewer means but I guess a partial defence of the scope of the book would be that most people when asked about conspiracy theories would think of the eccentric and irrational whether it is giant lizards ruling the world, UFOs, flat-earthers or that the UN or US federal government are seeking to establish a world government. In this blog post, I will share 5 books about conspiracy theories that you must read if you want to dive deeper into the world of conspiracies. While interesting and detailed in their own right and helpful in understanding the power of demagoguery, they reinforce the notion that elites use conspiracy theorising without actually believing in it. While writing my third novel, UnAmerican Activities, I watched a lot of conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. A counterfactual might explain why neither case, or indeed any similar case, is analysed as an example of conspiracy theorising.It’s really a bottomless hole in the most enjoyable way (if paranoid fables are your thing): no matter how bad you realize it is, it’s actually worse. This engaging book will be an important read for anyone concerned about the future direction of American politics, as well as anyone who's watched friends or family fall into patterns of conspiratorial thinking. Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 provides a wide-ranging analysis of the emergence and development of conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on the US and the UK.

Hopefully this oversight will be corrected in future editions, and will become more of a focus for the entire field of conspiracy theory studies. In this erudite account of the history and mystery of conspiratorial beliefs, he explores the devastating social consequences conspiracies can create—along with their powerful psychological and evolutionary benefits. Meanwhile, an ‘instrumental rationale’ is apparent in discussions of the deep state conspiracy in the Turkish parliament (Türkay Salim Nefes, 392). JFK, Karl Marx, the Pope, Aristotle Onassis, Queen Elizabeth II, Howard Hughes, Fox Mulder, Bill Clinton--all have been linked to vastly complicated global (or even galactic) intrigues. If working at an office location and you are not "logged in", simply close and relaunch your preferred browser.

This perfectly captures a key flaw with so many discussions of conspiracy theories, and indeed with Conspiracy Theories. However, the study of law and illiberalism is a relatively recent undertaking, a project that takes on urgency in light of the rise of authoritarian powers, among them Donald Trump’s administration, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, and Jair Bolsanoro’s Brazil. Why do people get so fascinated by these ideas that often have little or no evidence to support them? Argentinian presidents, finally, have resorted to conspiracy theory as a ‘mechanism for shoring up their authority’; if used properly, conspiracy theory discourse has ‘multilayered uses within strategic and political communications’ (Tanya Filer, 396, 404).

Bouttios and Late Antique Antioch undertakes the exciting, if laborious, task of assembling clues and piecing back together a book that has disappeared from our library of Greek and Roman works.Seeking to debunk some common yet irrational conspiracy theories, Shermer explains what drives people's belief in them while also acknowledging that real conspiracies do occur. Fenster's careful examination of conspiratorial beliefs as evidence by right-wing groups, by various media, and even by those who devise such theories as a form of ludic or satiric endeavor (like Robert Anton Wilson) is revealing. Conspiracy theories adopted by governments and political parties feel rather different in nature and would probably require a separate book. Levy defines this as a collective psychosis of humanity that wreaks havoc on the world around us – a psychosis that we must face down before we can hope to defeat it.