 Harper's Magazine, November 1964. |
Conspiracy theorists parade academic titles ("Dr.," "Professor"), earned or not. No less than conventional historians, they steep themselves in the literature of their subject and become expert in it. The difference lies in their methods; rather than piece together the past through the slow accumulation of facts, they plunder legitimate historical studies to build huge edifices out of odd and unrelated elements.
Making the truth harder to discern, conspiracist subjects draw many more pseudoscholars than real ones. A vast body of spurious studies has emerged in nearly all the languages of Europe over the past two centuries. The connection between Jews and Freemasons is the subject of only two works by legitimate scholars but dozens, if not hundreds, of books by anti-Jewish and antimasonic writers. A 1923 bibliography contains no fewer than twenty-three thousand titles on the Freemasons,[2] very few of them by disinterested researchers. In the thousands of books written on the John Kennedy assassination, only a tiny proportion argue against a conspiracy. The size of this corpus impresses some readers; "there is so much written ..., they figure some of it must be right."[3] The many books makes it possible for conspiracy theorists to cite each others' works, thereby constructing an imposing edifice of self-referential pseudoscholarship. In the case of old topics such as the Templars, they republish centuries-old books and quote them as authorities. In the case of new ones, like the John Kennedy assassination, they learnedly discuss each other's conclusions.
Conspiracist texts often come packaged as solid-looking books with introductions, forewords, acknowledgments, quotations, footnotes, bibliographies, indexes, and the other conventional trappings of learnedness. Even forgeries come wrapped in a mock academic paraphernalia. By replicating these elements of academic authority, the pseudoexpert finds it easier to convince the gullible or inexperienced reader to accept his pet theories. In addition, a profusion of references serves as a shield against criticism. When defending his book, The New World Order, from charges of antisemitism, Pat Robertson raised the irrelevancy that it "was carefully researched and contains seven single-spaced pages of bibliography from original historical sources."[4]
Conspiracy theorists tend to choose sober and flat titles, as though to disguise their anything-but-sober ideas. The most influential conspiracist book of all time goes by the pedantic title of Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism; its forged counterpart bears an arch-bureaucratic title (Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion). Jews in the Japanese Mind is a serious study, while The Japanese and the Jews[5] is wholly fantastical; yet they sound similar and both have reputable publishers.
Conspiracy theorists also publish seemingly responsible academic journals. By its title and appearance, the Revue internationale des sociétés secrètes projects an appearance of sound scholarship by dignified truth seekers; in fact, it long served as the central clearinghouse for the anti-secret society crowd. The Journal of Historical Review sounds akin to the American Historical Review; more than that, both quarterlies share a recognizably academic tone and list professorial boards of editors. But while the latter is a leading scholarly periodical, the former exists exclusively to disprove the reality of the Jewish Holocaust.
Nor can the reader rely on publishers to distinguish chaff from wheat; even some of the most reputable houses lend their names to conspiracist nonsense. The arch-respectable firm of Eyre and Spottiswoode published the first edition of the Protocols in England. Jonathan Cape in London (publisher of Samuel Butler, Len Deighton, Maksim Gorky, James Joyce, H. G. Wells, and William Carlos Williams) joined with Delacorte in New York to publish Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a study claiming that Jesus was a Jewish prince who had a son by Mary Magdalen who founded a monarchical dynasty, the Merovingian; and that a secret society named the Prieuré de Sion has since its founding in 1099 forwarded Merovingian interests.[6] A few years later, Jonathan Cape and Henry Holt combined forces to put out a second study on the same subject, this one sketching out the Prieuré de Sion's present activities "to bring about a monarchical or imperial United States of Europe" ruled by none other than the family of Jesus.[7]
Telling genuine scholarship apart from conspiracism becomes even more of a challenge in the topsy-turvy domain of the World Wide Web. Here, conspiracist materials have a disproportionate presence, the familiar signals of authority are harder to discern, and search engines indiscriminately turn up conspiracism and true scholarship. Texts that most individuals would disallow in their houses on paper turn up unheralded on their computer screens. The vilest hatemongers most insistently present themselves as stalwarts of free speech. In addition, the technology mesmerizes, and the slow pace of clicking and waiting can lull viewers into near-hypnosis.
 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's Die Schuld der Templer (1855) is in print. |
To make matters more confusing, some anti-conspiracy theorists turn into conspiracy theorists. Gary Sick offers a recent example of this evolution. His excellent 1985 book on the collapse of the shah of Iran and the Tehran hostage crisis, All Fall Down, dwelled on the mistakes of conspiracism. In it, Sick noted how Iranians "assume that a simple, forthright explanation of events is merely camouflage concealing the devious intricacies of 'reality,'" and he criticized Iranians for assuming that "[a]ny significant political, economic or social upheaval in Iran must be traceable to the manipulation of external powers."[9] These insights seemed to abandon Sick soon after. Already in 1988, he was brewing the October Surprise conspiracy theory alleging that Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by colluding with Ayatollah Khomeini.[10] Sick's trustworthiness carried so much weight that, his false notion of an October Surprise launched two congressional inquiries.
[1]. Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1967), p. 36. Hofstadter appears to have coined the term paranoid style. |
[2]. August Wolfsteig, Bibliographie der freimaurerischen Literatur, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1923). RLIN, Katz 6 |
[3]. Bill Alexander, the ex-assistant district attorney of Dallas, discussing the Kennedy assassination. Quoted in Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 467. |
[4]. The New York Times, 4 March 1995. Those "original historical sources" are in fact secondary sources, and they indiscriminately mix legitimate studies with such staples of conspiracism as books cited here by Anatoliy Golitsyn, John Robison, and Nesta Webster. |
[5]. Isaiah Ben-Dasan [pseud. of Shichihei Yamamoto], The Japanese and the Jews, trans. Richard L. Gage (Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1972). |
[6]. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Delacorte, 1982), pp. 79, 284-86. |
[7]. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy (New York: Henry Holt, 1986), p. 324. |
[8]. In Joseph de Hammer-Purgstall, Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum (Vienna: Heubner, 1818); Joseph von Hammer, Die Geschichte der Assassinen aus morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1818); Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Die Schuld der Templer in Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Classe (Vienna: Kaiserlich-königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1855), 6: 175-210. |
[9]. Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985), p. 33. |
[10]. New York Daily News, 26 August 1988; Rocky Mountain News, 30 October 1988. |
