Conspiracy theory

People in the US commonly associate this image with a conspiracy theory involving the Illiuminati or the Freemasons.

Front page of Edouard Drumont's La Libre Parole (1893) with a caricature of a Jew grabbing the globe, implying their alleged desire to control the world. Caption: "Their Homeland".

The International Jew: The World's Problem published in Henry Ford's newspaper The Dearborn Independent (1920), an offshoot of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion giving rise to the ZOG conspiracy theory.

A propaganda poster made by the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) implying that Black and Native Americans are the "real" descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The BHI allege that the said peoples have been "wrongfully" classified by White imperialists into different ethnic groups across the Western hemisphere.

A conspiracy theory is a story that says that a group of people (called "conspirators") have agreed ("conspired") to engage in illegal or malicious actions and hide them from the public.

Overview

Conspiracy theories usually have little or no credible evidence. Distorted history based on conspiracy theories is sometimes called pseudohistory (pseudo- : from Greek ψευδής, "false"). People who promote pseudohistory are called historical revisionists, or simply revisionists. Some claim that historical events like the Holocaust or the Moon landing were faked by "conspirators".

Examples

There are many conspiracy theories about historical events, including:

• The Holocaust
• The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States
• The Rwandan genocide
• The Cambodian genocide
• John F. Kennedy's assassination
• Diana, Princess of Wales' death
• Slavery in America (the Irish slaves myth)

There are also conspiracy theories about:

• Chemtrails
• UFOs
• The Moon landing
• The Illuminati and Freemasonry

Some of these theories - like the idea that the Earth is flat - are irrational because there is so much evidence proving that they are wrong.

Digital age

Conspiracy emerged as a cultural phenomenon in the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of conspiracy theories discussed on the Internet. Theories that once had few followers can become well-known through the mass media.

Conspiracy theorists get paid by websites according to how many viewers they attract. Websites that seem free to the user are paid for by adverts, usually quite harmless, though they may be annoying. The people who post individual articles get paid once the number of viewers exceeds a certain qualifying number.

Critique

David Grimes has calculated that it takes at least three years to expose a conspiracy theory on the internet, depending on the number of people involved. Many conspiracy theories are exposed in three to four years.

Conspiracy Theory Media

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  The Eye of Providence, as seen on the US$1 bill, has been perceived by some to be evidence of a conspiracy linking the Founding Fathers of the United States to the New World Order conspiracy theory.

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  The Warren Report book cover.*Transcripts from the U.S. Government Printing Office, reproduced in bound book form by the Associated Press.

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  In 2013, 97% of peer-reviewed climate science papers that took a position on the cause of global warming said that humans are responsible, 3% said they were not. Among Fox News guests the same year, this was presented as a false balance between the two viewpoints, with 31% of invited guests believing it was happening and 69% not.

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  Third Reich Nazi antisemitic propaganda poster entitled Das jüdische Komplott ("The Jewish Conspiracy")

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  A 2008 poll found that majorities in only 9 of 17 countries believed that al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks.

Related pages

• Antisemitism
• Cognitive bias
• Disinformation
• Social psychology
• Sociocultural theory
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion