Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid

Despite the lurid title, Australian academics Jane and Fleming offer a scholarly but intriguing examination of conspiracies and the ideas behind them. The work follows loosely in the tradition of classic pieces like Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” but the authors dismiss the common emphasis on “conspiracists” as a lowbrow fringe that rejects rationality in favor of a pre-Enlightenment world of superstition and powerful secret forces. Many conspiracies are widely accepted—most Americans, for instance, believe the government is hiding information on UFOs—and, paradoxically, conspiracies “offer revelations and truths despite themselves.” The authors add that Enlightenment thinkers rejected appeals to authority in favor of inductive reasoning. Conspiracists not only observe this principle to an absurd extreme, but they also take the truth of their assumptions for granted, concentrating on the flaws in doubters’ arguments. Similarly, zealots believe in plots featuring brilliant, if evil, collaborators who march in lockstep and keep their secrets, while real-life conspiracies (Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Dreyfus Affair, even the assassination of Lincoln) tend to be clumsy and impossible to conceal. Though the book is riddled with turgid academic prose and probably better suited as a long essay, it remains an insightful and nuanced examination of conspiracist thought. (Aug.)