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Author: Lance deHaven-Smith
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-04-15
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0292743793
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAsserts 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realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct—articulated in the Declaration of Independence—has been replaced by today's blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition.
Author: Joseph E. Uscinski
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 0199351813
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConspiracies theories are some of the most striking features in the American political landscape: the Kennedy assassination, aliens at Roswell, subversion by Masons, Jews, Catholics, or communists, and modern movements like Birtherism and Trutherism. But what do we really know about conspiracy theories? Do they share general causes? Are they becoming more common? More dangerous? Who is targeted and why? Who are the conspiracy theorists? How has technology affected conspiracy theorising? This book offers the first century-long view of these issues.
Author: Jesse Ventura
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
Published: 2010-03-08
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 160239802X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJesse Ventura takes a systematic look at the gap between what the American government knows and what it reveals to the American people. According to this former Navy SEAL, former pro wrestler, and former Minnesota governor, the media is complicit in these acts of deception. For too long, the mainstream press has refused to consider alternate possibilities and to ask the tough questions. In Ventura's eyes, the murder of Abraham Lincoln and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, all need to be re-examined. Was the CIA involved in Watergate? Did the Republican Party set out to steal two elections on behalf of George W. Bush? Has all the evidence been presented about the 9/11 attacks? And finally, is the collapse of today's financial order and the bailout plan by the Federal Reserve the widest-reaching conspiracy ever perpetrated?--From publisher description.
Author: Michael Barkun
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780520248120
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUnravelling 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.
Author: Thomas Milan Konda
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2019-03-15
Total Pages: 451
ISBN-13: 022658576X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt’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.
Author: Robert Alan Goldberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2008-10-01
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 0300132948
DOWNLOAD EBOOKdivdivThere is a hunger for conspiracy news in America. Hundreds of Internet websites, magazines, newsletters, even entire publishing houses, disseminate information on invisible enemies and their secret activities, subversions, and coverups. Those who suspect conspiracies behind events in the news—the crash of TWA Flight 800, the death of Marilyn Monroe—join generations of Americans, from the colonial period to the present day, who have entertained visions of vast plots. In this enthralling book Robert Goldberg focuses on five major conspiracy theories of the past half-century, examining how they became widely popular in the United States and why they have remained so. In the post–World War II decades conspiracy theories have become more numerous, more commonly believed, and more deeply embedded in our culture, Goldberg contends. He investigates conspiracy theories regarding the Roswell UFO incident, the Communist threat, the rise of the Antichrist, the assassination of President John Kennedy, and the Jewish plot against black America, in each case taking historical, social, and political environments into account. Conspiracy theories are not merely the products of a lunatic fringe, the author shows. Rather, paranoid rhetoric and thinking are disturbingly central in America today. With media validation and dissemination of conspiracy ideas, and federal government behavior that damages public confidence and faith, the ground is fertile for conspiracy thinking. /DIV/DIV
Author: Michael Butter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2020-10-06
Total Pages: 146
ISBN-13: 1509540830
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConspiracy 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.
Author: Jesse Walker
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2014-10-14
Total Pages: 333
ISBN-13: 0062383221
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA comprehensive history and analysis of the origins, evolution, and current life, legacy, and impact of conspiracy theories in American culture and politics, from the colonial era to today. Conspiracies have been woven through America’s social tapestry since the beginning of its history. The United States of Paranoia is a unique and fascinating look at how these commonly held beliefs—true or not—have helped shape the American cultural imagination. Using examples from colonial times to today, Jesse Walker makes the compelling argument that paranoia doesn’t just exist on the fringe of society, but is at the core of our national identity. Walker doesn’t focus on proving or disproving a particular theory. Synthesizing intensive archival research in a pulp fiction narrative, he explores the myths that haunt our nation, breaking them into five distinct categories: The Enemy Outside, The Enemy Within, The Enemy Above, The Enemy Below, and The Benevolent Conspiracy. From J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to Watergate, the “Matrix” phenomenon to the Birthers, Walker reveals how national myths have influenced our lives, including our view of ourselves and our government. He also identifies and explores the little-recognized rise of a subculture obsessed not with one single myth or another, but in the notion of the conspiracy phenomenon itself. This growing obsession, Walker attests, offers profound insight into what it means to be American. Provocative, well-reasoned, and utterly compelling, the United States of Paranoia will make you rethink the world and the nation in a new and different way.
Author: Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-01-02
Total Pages: 335
ISBN-13: 019972024X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany 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.
Author: Peter Knight
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2002-02
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 0814747361
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn intriguing interrogation of America’s long-running obsession with conspiracy theories Why are Americans today so fascinated by Area 51? How did rumors that the AIDS virus originated as a weapon of biowarfare emerge? Why does the Kennedy assassination provoke heated debate over fifty years after the fact, and why did Donald Trump’s birther theories only serve to increase his popularity with voters? The origins of these ideas reveal important facets of American culture and politics. Placing conspiracy thinking at the center of American history, and challenging the knee-jerk dismissal of conspiratorial thought as deluded and often dangerous, Conspiracy Nation provides a wide-ranging survey of conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In the 19th century, inflammatory rhetoric about slave revolts, the well-publicized specter of the black rapist, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan all worked as conspiracy theories to legitimate an emerging sense of national consciousness based on an ideology of white supremacy – one that still persists today. In our contemporary world, panicked responses to increasing multiculturalism and globalization yield new notions of victimhood and new theories about conspiratorial plans for global domination. Offering up a provocative array of examples, ranging from alien abduction to the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon to Tupac Shakur's "paranoid style," Conspiracy Nation documents and unearths the workings of conspiracy in the contemporary moment. Contributors: Clare Birchall, Jack Bratich, Bridget Brown, Jodi Dean, Ingrid Walker Fields, Douglas Kellner, Peter Knight, Fran Mason, John A. McClure, Timothy Melley, Eithne Quinn, and Skip Willman
