[Peace-discuss] A note on conspiracy theories

[Szoke, Ron]

Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories : Secrecy and Power in American Culture (U. of Minnesota P., 1999, 282 pp.)   
[ Ph.D. in communications, UIUC; Yale law ]

>From the jacket front flap: 

Fenster argues that conspiracy theories are a form of popular political interpretation and contends that recognizing how they circulate through mass culture helps us better understand our society as a whole. To that end, he discusses Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics, the militia movement, The X-Files, popular Christian apocalyptic thought, and such artifacts of suspicion as  The Turner Diaries, The Illuminati Trilogy, and the novels of Richard Condon [The Manchurian Candidate].  

Fenster analyzes the “conspiracy community” of radio shows, magazine and book publishers, Internet resources and role-playing games that cultivate these theories.  He believes that conspiracy theory has become a thrill for a bored subculture, one characterized by its members’ reinterpretation of “accepted” history, their deep cynicism about contemporary politics, and their longing for a utopian future.  
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