March 20, 2010
BUT THE ONE THING THEY CAN ALL AGREE ON? IT WAS ALL BUSH'S FAULT:
Nuts and Dolts: a review of VOODOO HISTORIES: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History By David Aaronovitch (ROSS DOUTHAT, 3/20/10, NY Times Book Review)
[T]here’s a fish-in-a-barrel quality to some of Aaronovitch’s debunkings, and the book’s sprawl means that its insights into the conspiratorial mind-set often feel hopelessly general or disappointingly banal. (You will not be surprised to learn, for instance, that the paranoid often “fail to apply the principle of Occam’s razor to their arguments.”) Every conspiracy theory is not created equal: the dark anti-Trotskyist obsessions that produced Russia’s show trials, the subject of an early chapter, would seem to have little in common with the cheerful crankishness of a Velikovsky or an Erich “Chariots of the Gods” von Däniken. And an analysis that tries to account for them all won’t end up accounting for much of anything.What’s more interesting about “Voodoo Histories” is the way its narrative subtly undercuts the popular notion that the influence of conspiracy theories has increased with the rise of the Internet and the decline of public trust in government. If anything, Aaronovitch’s book suggests that the paranoid style’s direct power over Western politics has declined precipitously over the last 50 years. (The politics of the Arab world, admittedly, are another matter entirely.)
You can draw a bright line from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to the anti-Semitic delusions of the 1920s and thence to Hitler’s criminal regime. It’s much harder to connect “birtherism,” “9/11 trutherism” or the wild fantasies surrounding the Kennedy assassination to anything save a diffuse mood of mistrust, anger and paranoia — and the occasional lunatic gunman at the Pentagon.
Yesterday’s conspiracy theorists governed countries, commanded armies and dealt out death and destruction on a vast scale. Today’s conspiracy theorists have detailed Web sites, slick videos and best-selling books, but precious little direct power. The paranoid mood helps polarize our politics, no doubt, and can inspire spasms of nihilistic violence. But for now, at least, it’s more of a sideshow than a clear and present danger.
But a danged amusing set of sideshows they make.