Conspiracy: American as apple pie?

The author of a rewarding study of conspiracism in the United States, whose current president appears to have normalised it, asks tentatively whether it is corroding American democracy

Conspiracies of Conspiracies How Delusions Have Overrun America

Thomas Milan Konda

University of Chicago Press 2019 Hb, 442pp, ind, notes, $30, ISBN 9780226585765

Conspiracy theory is a worldwide phenomenon, but nowhere in the world has its influence been felt, and debated, so much as in the United States. So it’s no surprise that the academic study of conspiracy theory (conspiracy theory theory) and the slew of books on the subject, academic and otherwise, are centred in the USA, and focus most often on the phenomenon of conspiracism as it appears in the USA.

Pizzagate, the QAnon phenomenon, ‘false flag’ responses to mass shootings, the sovereign individual; these are the meat of modern conspiracism in America – these and the fact that the current president arguably came to political prominence on the back of a conspiracy theory (the Obama ‘birther’ movement) and has continued to allude to conspiratorial themes both in his election campaign and during his tenure. If Trump and his support base have brought conspiracism into the mainstream of American political discourse, they have done so on firm historical foundations; as Thomas Konda argues in his extensive analysis, conspiratorial thinking has been around pretty much since the birth of the Republic, and has often exercised some influence (baleful in the main, he contends) on the political climate.

Conspiracies of Conspiracies charts the history of conspiracism in America, from the reception of pioneering works such as John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (first published in 1797), through the various flowerings of homegrown theory, up to the frenetic, Internet-fuelled activity of today. Konda’s survey is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt yet to record and understand the phenomenon of conspiracy theory as it applies to American politics, and the large number of American thinkers and writers who have worked from the now classic assumption that ‘they’ are out to get ‘us’.

While conspiracy theory is not in itself quintessentially American – the first major conspiracist works came from a Scot (Robison; yet another unacknowledged invention from Scotland?) and a French man, Augustin Barruel – Konda, implicitly at least, suggests that there is a quintessentially American version of it. American conspiracism is often religious, and always religiose; it is often paranoid, and always somehow beleaguered; it is regularly racist, and always at least partly xenophobic; it is often supremacist, and always exceptionalist; it is usually partisan, and more often rightwing; in short, it’s a peculiar microcosm of American culture.

Is it also a particularly American psychopathy? Konda discusses the psychology of conspiracism (another area of academia that’s currently flourishing) and is broadly sympathetic to the view that conspiracism is linked to certain dispositions: schizotypy, paranoia, an over-developed sensitivity to pattern recognition. But he also points out that many of the studies conducted have limitations, and often find it hard to replicate results (occasionally

“Conspiratorial thinking has been around pretty much since the birth of the Republic”

a sign that the original study was flawed, or inherently biased). He is catholic enough in his survey of theoretical work to include those (such as Jack Bratich, Matthew Dentith and Lee Basham, among others) who do not share the view that conspiracy theory is purely the preserve of the mad. Nonetheless, he tends to the view that conspiracy theorists are at the least eccentric, and often a little crazy.

The main strength of the book lies in its historical narrative. Konda takes us from the early suspicions of Illuminati influence on the founding of the Republic, through the growing trend to anti-Semitism among the writers (and supporters) of the 19th century and the emerging distrust of elite bankers, the white supremacist response to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, constitutionalist conspiracism, the Tea Party storm, to the current climate of false flags, crisis actors, and the wide-ranging apoplexy of the alt-right. Through it all, the common and confounding themes of American conspiracism provide an eccentric entelechy that links the diverse fears and phantoms that haunt the political and emotional landscape; it is as if ‘they’ continually morph and mutate over time, but the idea of ‘us’ is a constant.

That idea of ‘us’ is a partisan construct, of course. The American Conspirasphere is divided (and not entirely evenly, it appears) between a right-leaning constituency that hates government but loves authority (and yes, there is something inherently fascist about such a viewpoint) and a liberal left that craves regulation but fears the imposition of power from above or beyond (for which read religion and Russia). Konda ruminates, not always comfortably, on whether the contemporary incursion of conspiracism into the mainstream is, ultimately, corrosive of the democratic process. Despite his best efforts, and the tolerance of his narrative in most respects, he struggles to remain agnostic on this point. One senses that his inner voice says conspiracy theory is bad for the stability of the state, even as his intellectual persona argues that, theoretically at least, dissidence and questioning, even when it is as left-field as Q, is fundamental to democracy, or at least permissible within its bounds.

You won’t find a catalogue of mad musings in Conspiracies of Conspiracies; it’s largely a sober and reflective book (although Konda exercises a sly, dry humour on occasion) on a subject that is increasingly contentious, and increasingly central, in the discourses on American politics, science and medicine in particular. But there is plenty to be discovered here; this is the first book on conspiracy theory I have read in a while that has introduced me to new characters in the history of the phenomenon. For instance, the surprisingly large number of women who

were influential in conspiracist circles, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s and beyond, was a revelation. And who knew that the great Ignatius Donnelly had penned a conspiracist novel ( Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century)?

Konda makes references to other countries (most often the UK) but one weakness of the book for me was the lack of a significant comparator; another country or culture against which to measure the depth of conspiracism in the USA. Is the USA unique or merely unusual in the importance that is now given to thinking, positive or negative, about conspiracism? What does conspiracism look like in the countries closest to the USA in terms of political power, Russia and China for instance; and in those countries most removed from that power? Are there countries where conspiracy theory has played a more influential or active part in the political process?

That complaint aside, I would recommend Conspiracies of Conspiracies as a thoughtful, thought-provoking and relatively balanced analysis of conspiracy theory in the USA, and a comprehensive history of the phenomenon as it has grown and developed over 200 years or so. The language is academic but not oppressively so, and Konda manages to give a clear picture of a subject that is more often obscured under a deluge of intensely partisan opinions. Despite the subtitle, this is as objective as academics get about conspiracy theory.

Noel Rooney

★★★★ ★