130 Citizens
with the anti-vaccination movement), drawing upon organisations such
as Friends of the Earth insofar as they helped him in his opposition to
big government in all its forms. Likewise, in 2004, Infowars regularly
carried articles on the Abu Ghraib atrocities and other events of the war
on terror, 9-11 being an inside job forming the ur-conspiracy that lay
behind all others, promulgating the central message of his 2002 book,
9-11, the subtitle of which promised to reveal “The New World Order’s
dark plans to turn Earth into a prison planet”.
15
Indeed, 9/11 provided
a useful nursery for the techniques that Jones would deploy later. As
Stempel, Harvey, and Stempel discovered in their 2007 analysis of 9-11
conspiracy theories, members of less powerful groups (whether racial
minorities, people of younger ages, those of lower social classes, and
so on) were more likely to believe at least one of the conspiracies, while
consumers of mainstream media were less likely – but also that political
affiliation affected which theories respondents believed, with Democrats
more likely to believe that the US government did nothing to prevent
the attacks, while Republicans tended towards the conspiracies that the
Twin Towers were deliberately demolished or the Pentagon was bombed
by the military. Significantly, by 2007, the authors suggested that “conspiracy thinking is a normal part of mainstream political conflict in the
United States”.
16
The Internet had a huge role to play in the dissemination of such theories – with Infowars being a significant player – but
Clarke could also observe in 2007 that while online communications
helped to disseminate non-mainstream ideas and were quickly taken up
by conspiracy theorists, this also contributed to a fragmentation of theories and, in the hypercritical atmosphere of online bulletin boards, may
even have led to slowing down of the development of those theories so
that advocates were less keen to fix on specific versions that they knew
would attract criticism.
17
9-11, as Cohnitz has observed, provided a clear example of the epistemological frameworks by which conspiracy theories operate, while
also taking issue with interpretations of Karl Popper’s theory in The
Open Society and its Enemies that such theorists believe every event
is due to successful planning. Cohnitz argues instead that Popper was
really interested in the emerging field of sociology’s engagement with
such theories rather than conspiracy per se, and that a more sophisticated view of them that is twofold: first, that agents secretly conspire to
achieve a common end (which, he suggests, allows such theories to be
rationally believed), but that such conspiracies are maliciously motivated
which is where paranoia starts to enter into the equation; such paranoia,
however, is driven by scepticism, a refusal to believe readily available
explanations, which makes such belief appear hyper-rational.
18
An additional factor which comes into play with the dissemination of such
theories concerns their delivery: Cohnitz argues (perhaps a touch naively) that mainstream media in open societies does a relatively effective
with the anti-vaccination movement), drawing upon organisations such
as Friends of the Earth insofar as they helped him in his opposition to
big government in all its forms. Likewise, in 2004, Infowars regularly
carried articles on the Abu Ghraib atrocities and other events of the war
on terror, 9-11 being an inside job forming the ur-conspiracy that lay
behind all others, promulgating the central message of his 2002 book,
9-11, the subtitle of which promised to reveal “The New World Order’s
dark plans to turn Earth into a prison planet”.
15
Indeed, 9/11 provided
a useful nursery for the techniques that Jones would deploy later. As
Stempel, Harvey, and Stempel discovered in their 2007 analysis of 9-11
conspiracy theories, members of less powerful groups (whether racial
minorities, people of younger ages, those of lower social classes, and
so on) were more likely to believe at least one of the conspiracies, while
consumers of mainstream media were less likely – but also that political
affiliation affected which theories respondents believed, with Democrats
more likely to believe that the US government did nothing to prevent
the attacks, while Republicans tended towards the conspiracies that the
Twin Towers were deliberately demolished or the Pentagon was bombed
by the military. Significantly, by 2007, the authors suggested that “conspiracy thinking is a normal part of mainstream political conflict in the
United States”.
16
The Internet had a huge role to play in the dissemination of such theories – with Infowars being a significant player – but
Clarke could also observe in 2007 that while online communications
helped to disseminate non-mainstream ideas and were quickly taken up
by conspiracy theorists, this also contributed to a fragmentation of theories and, in the hypercritical atmosphere of online bulletin boards, may
even have led to slowing down of the development of those theories so
that advocates were less keen to fix on specific versions that they knew
would attract criticism.
17
9-11, as Cohnitz has observed, provided a clear example of the epistemological frameworks by which conspiracy theories operate, while
also taking issue with interpretations of Karl Popper’s theory in The
Open Society and its Enemies that such theorists believe every event
is due to successful planning. Cohnitz argues instead that Popper was
really interested in the emerging field of sociology’s engagement with
such theories rather than conspiracy per se, and that a more sophisticated view of them that is twofold: first, that agents secretly conspire to
achieve a common end (which, he suggests, allows such theories to be
rationally believed), but that such conspiracies are maliciously motivated
which is where paranoia starts to enter into the equation; such paranoia,
however, is driven by scepticism, a refusal to believe readily available
explanations, which makes such belief appear hyper-rational.
18
An additional factor which comes into play with the dissemination of such
theories concerns their delivery: Cohnitz argues (perhaps a touch naively) that mainstream media in open societies does a relatively effective