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	Conspiracy Theories: The Pocket Essential Guide By: Ramsay, Robin Published By: Pocket Essentials ePub for Digital Editions Price: $19.99 PDF for Digital Editions Price: $19.99 Mobipocket Reader Price: $19.99 Microsoft Reader Price: $19.99 Available to read online in eb20 (what's this?) PDF for Digital EditionsePub for Digital EditionsMobipocket ReaderMicrosoft Reader	EBOOK OPTIONS ADD TO CART ADD TO WISHLIST TELL A FRIEND RECEIVE ALERTS
	Did you think the X-Files is fiction? If so, you must be one of those deluded fools who think Elvis is dead, and believe that the US actually went to the moon, and don't know that the ruling elites did a deal with the extra-terrestrials after the Roswell crash in 1947... Boy, it really is getting strange out there. At one time, you could blame the world's troubles on the Masons or the Illuminati, or the Jews, or One Worlders, or the Great Communist Conspiracy. Now, in addition to the usual suspects, we also have the alien-US elite conspiracy, or the alien shape-shifting reptile conspiracy to worry about - and there are books to prove it as well! Conspiracy Theories? They are all in here - but not just lined up to be ridiculed and dismissed. OK, there is some of that, but the author also tries to sort out the handful of wheat from the choking clouds of intellectual chaff. For among the nonsensical Conspiracy Theory rubbish currently proliferating on the Internet, there are important nuggets of real research about real conspiracies waiting to be mined. This book has done the mining for you. Fully sourced and referenced, this is both a serious examination of Conspiracy Theories and the Conspiracy Theory phenomenon, and a guide to further explorations of the subject.

Excerpt

The conspiracy theory boom of the last few years shows no sign of abating. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, 20 million copies sold world-wide, which four million people have read in the UK, has ensured that. The fact that a novel about a conspiracy theory, involving a group which doesn’t exist, could generate so much heat is another sign of conspiracy theories creeping into the mainstream. Even Polly Toynbee in The Guardian felt obliged to warn us of the pernicious nature of conspiracy theories. I agree with her: they are pernicious. Or, rather, to anticipate one of my arguments below, some of them are. The all-encompassing variety which offer to explain great chunks of history and politics by the secret machinations of small groups – the Jews, the Masons etc. – are pernicious. Before Dan Brown’s naff novel it was the events of 9/11/2001 which gave birth to a great reef of theories in cyberspace; before that The X-Files in the mid 1990s boosted the number and visibility of conspiracy theories in popular culture. These are the major landmarks in the development of the ‘conspiracy culture’ and two of the three are fiction. This ‘culture’s’ distinguishing characteristic is the tendency to assume either that the deaths of all celebrities and all major geopolitical events are the result of conspiracies, or that all such events might be conspiracies. Take the death of Princess Diana. The motives of those chiefly involved in the conspiracy theorising were mixed. The main impetus behind this undoubtedly came from Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohammed El Fayed, and is perhaps under¬standable as the reaction of a grieving parent, with several hundred million pounds to spend, who has suddenly lost his son and his son’s extremely glamorous girlfriend in a one-car crash. Encouraging Fayed’s beliefs were some of the followers of Lyndon LaRouche Jr, a strange American conspiracy theorist whom I discuss below, who sees the evil hand of the British Royal family behind much of the world’s troubles. For LaRouche’s followers it is axiomatic that the British Royals killed Di. Conspiracy theorists seized on the words of Richard Tomlinson, the former MI6 officer who told the world of a British intelligence plan to kill the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a tunnel, using a bright light to disorientate the driver of his car. (One witness from Paris had reported seeing a flash just before Di’s car crashed.) Recently the former MI5 officer Annie Machon has stated that she and her partner, David Shayler, suspect MI6’s involvement (although they offer no evidence).1 The driver of the car, Henri Paul, has been discovered to have received large amounts of unaccountable money and is suspected of being in the pay of MI62; and the photographer James Andanson, the suspected driver of the white Fiat car, which was seen near the incident, has died a bizarre death.3 Although the major media are no longer pursuing the story, there are still many Internet sites discussing her death and the ‘no conspiracy’ verdict reached by the French legal inquiry and the ‘no conspiracy’ verdict we will undoubtedly get from the current, ongoing British police inquiry, will not deter the conspiracy theorists.4 There are enough loose ends to keep the fire going. Even the death of a relatively minor figure such as John F. Kennedy Jr in a plane crash in 1999 was immediately surrounded by question marks which ranged from the relatively simple – people reporting phenomena during the event not reported by the mass media – to full-blown con¬spiracy theories arguing that this latest dead Kennedy’s alleged plans to run for President provided the reason for his assassination.

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Related Subjects

• Current Events > International
• Political Science > Conspiracy
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