Customer Reviews

Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From

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Daniel Pipes is an anti-conspiracy theorist and he makes some good arguments against such allegedly paranoid thinking. Sure you don't trust the mainstream media, but why should you trust your local, possibly wacko, conspiracy theorist? You've read all the paranoid theories, why not read a critique against such theories? It will be a challenge and also just plain good for you.

Pipes says that we should avoid paranoid thinking because it demonizes others that are not to blame and the evidence used against them is faulty. Amusingly, he describes antisemitic theorists who have not even met a Jew.

Pipes most valuable contribution is his history of conspiracy theories, mainly involving Jews and Freemasons at first, and then British and Americans in later times. During the Crusades, antisemitism became more systematic in its hatred and developed conspiracy theories against Jews, in this time of intolerant religious fervor. During the French Revolution, people we're looking for an easy way to explain such a messy and bloody event and began blaming the revolution on the Jews and Freemasons. In more modern times, the world powers of Britain and America were blamed for the world's troubles especially during the Lenin and Stalin regimes which concocted anti-imperialist conspiracy theories. Hitler focused more on antisemitic theories. During this age of totalarianism, paranoid thinking became status quo and murder of "subversives" became commonplace. Pipes also gives an insightful analysis of the characteristics of conspiracy theories.

This is a challenging book for true believers in conspiracy theories and a book that debunkers will enjoy. Perhaps Pipes could have debunked one conspiracy theory directly and this may be a weakness. Also, he does not deal with quotes from society's elites such a Henry Kissinger who says that we will have global government. So maybe Pipes has oversimplified as much as the conspiracy theorists have oversimplified. Yet still, you've heard that many things are too good to be true, maybe many conpiracy theories are too bad to be true.

The reviews here are ample enough reason to read this intriguing book. I became interested in conspiracy theory on the evening of September 11th when someone said to me something about how we'll never learn the real truth because you can't believe the government. I was a little more than perplexed by this back-to-the-paranoid-70's statement, and I decided to look for books on the topic.

It's an amazing book. Conspiracy theory is.... well, everywhere. Few great names have been untouched by its allures. We all know that it was behind the Holocaust, but how many of us know to what extent conspiracy theory defined the Soviet regime's genocidal practices as well? Furthermore, conspiracy theory controls politics in many areas of the world to this day.

Reviews on this page point further to the problem of conspiracy theory in our midst. "Wake up people! This author belongs to the Council of Foreign Relations, that is a documented fact." AND "We all realize the existence of people with inordinantly fearful views of the world. These people are called paranoid. When these people obsess on certain topics, the result can be conspiracy theories. Alternatively, sometimes these people actually discover important things that the rest of us have overlooked."

If you want to understand where reviewers like this are coming from, read Pipes' book. Because, if you take nothing else from it, you will discover that conspiracy theories are not harmless. Most real conspiracies began with a conspiracy theory, and the 20th century is bathed in blood as a result.

Pipes book is a fair-minded but clear-headed review of the sources and motives of conspiratist thinking and its long-standing appeal. While many have rightly discerned the negative impact of communism, how many millions of deaths this century can be attributed to two conspiratists--Stalin and Hitler--who actually came to power and position to "do something" about the conspiracies they believed in? With piercing clarity, Pipes describes the motives and paranoia that led to massive genocide and that was sourced directly from paranoid epistemology. If you are interested in Conspiracy Theories or know someone that is, buy this book.

Pipes observes, "Every hate group has a conspiracy at the heart of its thinking." He goes on to explain how the "Right and Left engage in similar forms of conspiracism because they share much with each other-a temperament of hatred, a tendency toward violence, a suspiciousness that encourages conspiracism-and little with the political center." The best book I've read on the subject. Highly recommended.

The LaRouche organization dislikes this book because it shows how their whole "system" of ideas is based on a fraud. They want to denigrate it, among other ways by giving it terrible reviews on Amazon.com (note how many come from LaRouche h.q.s in Virginia). Ignore their putrid ideas and read the book.

Mr. Pipes has written a well documented account and history of conspiracies across the ages. I do feel that he doesn't fully appreicate the degree that "conspiracy" thinking has infliltrated America today. Overall, a wonderful effort by Mr. Pipes to examine and explain the often "unclear" and baffling world of "conspiracy theories." This isn't the definitive work on "conspiracies"; it's worldviews and history, that I've been waiting for, but it is a step in the right direction.

It's tempting merely to laugh at the conspiracist theories that permeate the political extremes and the pseudo-scientific cults. What is important and original about Pipes' work on the subject, though, is its historical perspective. I found it a fascinating insight that conspiracism (Freemasonry at the time of Mozart's membership, for example) was once associated with liberal values, but later became bound up with a very different political traidition (the Jacobins and Leninism). Pipes continually makes counter-intuitive but well-reasoned observations about his subjects: for example, he observes that the anti-semitic tradition in conspiracism is distinct from that concerned with secret societies (Pat Robertson's conspiracist writings express the latter theme but not the former); and he identifies the links between an often crude and semi-literate right-wing variant of conspiracism, and an ostensibly sophisticated leftist variant, as advocated by the linguist Noam Chomsky, that is similarly "hare-brained" (as Pipes perceptively describes it).

Thought-provoking, and well worth reading for insights into a little-studied (if egregious) aspect of intellectual history.

I used this book for an undergraduate seminar on conspiracy. It is most useful for providing backgorund on some major, persistent conspriacy theory, explaining why, for example, Jews and Masons are frequently targeted. But there are some big problems too. For example, how can you review the history of conspiracies and leave out the theme of witch hunts? It does pose a problem for Pipes, who prefers to believe conspiracy theories were more predominant after the French Revolution. Pipes fails to realize how important gender is in conspiracy theory.

Some sweeping generalizations are made. Pipes confounds conspiracy theory with radical critiques of the elitist school of thought. He can be quite inconsistent. Winston Churhill is said not to hve been contaminated by his conspiracy theories, but Jesse Jackson is. Leninism is not merely examined for elements of conspiratorial thinking, it's conspiratorial at its heart.

Not a bad book in many repects, but beware the rightist biases.

Dan Hellinger, Webster University

Mr. Pipes follows the history of conspiracism and determines that it has two separate and distinct main threads: anti Semitism; and secret societies. There is occasional overlap and crossover between the two, but in general they have remained apart. While his research appears sparse at points, that may be due to the huge scope of his view, and to the very real difficulty in researching the essentially unresearchable (for example, how far can one study a "secret society" before losing oneself in the contradictions of myth, fact, and most revealing, myths accepted as facts?). At times the thread pursued by the author seems tenuous, but he does make a telling case in support of his thesis of these two dominant strains of conspiracism. Most chilling of all is his discussions of nations where conspiracism has become official state policy, specifically Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. I would have liked more indepth study of postwar American conspiracy theories, such as UFOs, the UN, and connections, if any, with various New Age beliefs, but that's my own particular interest. Mr. Pipes is mainly concerned with a broader historical picture.

While Mr. Pipes follows these twin paths of conspiracism, he demolishes the most widely accepted belief of the conspiracy theorists, that there are continuous sects and societies behind everything, and that all we see is simply the outward manifestation of their centuries long struggle for dominance. Make no mistake - the postulation of a continuous thread of conspiracism is not the same as accepting the existence of the conspiracies spanning generations and continents. While this book can not claim to be the definitive word on the subject (unless and until the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, the Trilateral Commission, and the Rosicrucians open their archives), it does provide an interesting overview of conspiracism and demonstrates that the weirder paranoids among us have a long, if not distinguished lineage.

His encouraging conclusion that conspiracism has been increasingly marginalized (at least in the West) since the Second World War is offset somewhat by real world examples of collision between these conspiracists and the rest of society, e.g. Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City. Perhaps the greatest danger of modern day conspiracism is the extent to which preventive or corrective measures may backfire - how many of us are uncomfortable with the government's handling of the three cited cases, and of those, how many will be moved to align themselves with extremist groups?

Interesting and intelligently written history of conspiracy thinking down through the ages.