Conspiracy Theories, Eric Eliason
Eliason, Eric ‘Conspiracy Theories’ in American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (editor: Brunvand, Jan Harold), Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1996
Conspiracy Theories
Notions of history and society holding that certain unexplained events, as well as human suffering and powerlessness, result from the machinations of secretive groups whose surreptitious aim is to wield power through deceit and violence.
The attempt to expose and combat ostensible conspiracies is a particularly American pastime. In fact, the United States is the only Western nation in which conspiracy to commit a crime is prosecutable as a crime in and of itself. This infatuation with conspiratorial activity articulates the Amencan values of democratic openness and antielitism.
Some schools of conspiracy theory address a single event, such as the deaths of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, or Marilyn Monroe. Others do not settle for identifying trivial cabals, but propose the existence of worldwide networks that form the center of a conspiratorial woridview that allows its adherents to make sense of the whole world and all of its events in a manner not unlike a religious belief system. Indeed, conspiratorialism and religious belief are often inexorably intertwined. The devil is often regarded as the source of all conspiracy, and God is the protector of those conspired against.
America’s first great conspiracy concern involved this sort of religious dimension. The Puritans regarded the pope in Rome as the biblically prophesied anti-Christ who would aspire to world domination in the last days-an idea that would never leave some segments of American folk consciousness. Since colonial America had few Catholics, Puritan anti-Catholicism found few tangible targets. In the 1820s, when William Morgan was allegedly murdered by Freemasons for exposing their secret rites, anti-Masonry became so popular that it formed the basis for an influential political party. Later in the 19th century; as hundreds of thousands fled Ireland and eastern and southern Europe for the United States, anti-Catholicism reemerged reinvigorated by the presence of living, breathing Catholics. Nativist politicians decried Catholic allegiance to the Vatican as treasonous, and lurid tales of the diabolical deeds of monks and nuns saturated the popular press. As the 20th century began, Communism (often associated with eastern European immigration) began to emerge as the main conspiratorial threat to American culture.
During the second Red Scare of the 1950s, the John Birch Society-whose name is almost synonymous with conspiracy theory-ism-regarded U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (ironically, a Catholic) of Wisconsin as a folk hero. Curiously, despite its vehement anti-Communism, the John Birch Society identified the same groups that leftists identified (and continue to identify) as the key players in the worldwide conspiracy game-the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and big-money capitalists.
Conservative Protestants-long the instigators of conspiracy accusations found themselves in the late 20th century on the receiving end of conspiratorial accusations as they mounted campaigns to influence local and national politics.
Today, Americans can pick from a smorgasbord of paranoias. None of the traditional conspirators ever really disap-
prated; they just faded into the background as new ones more resonant with modern concerns emerged.
Conspiracy theories can be seen as “folk social science” and ‘folk history” that attempt to accomplish the same goals as their mainstream academic counterparts-providing meaningful and accurate explanations for conditions in the world. Conspiracy theories do this outside respected forums and styles of discussions and through such foildoric media as the fringe press and oral transmission.
Conspiracy theory-ism is a thriving industry whose various manifestations support numerous bookstores, magazines, and symposiums. Conspiracy theorists form communities of “true disbelievers”-subcultures of intellectual dissent from official, mainstream cultural analysis.
The great irony of conspiracy theory-ism in America is that it is often those groups most caught up in exposing the conspiracies of others that themselves behave in the most conspiratorial manner. Anti-Masons would meet in secret groups to denounce the secrecy of Freemasonry and conspire to destroy its adherents. The fleetingly influential narivist ‘Know Nothing” political parry got its name from the fact that it began us a secret society whose members would disclaim any knowledge of the organization. The Ku Klux Klan has long been warning against conspiracies to strip “real” Americans of their constitutional freedoms, while at the same time conspiring behind white sheets and secret meetings to deprive African Americans, Jews, and Catholics of their civil rights.
Eric Eliason
