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Loading... Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (2010)by David Aaronovitch
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Really enjoyed this one. Aaronovitch packs a lot of details and research into this book, but it's necessary when he's skewering some of the greatest conspiracy theories of the last 100 years or so. I picked this one up because I really am one of those people who roll their eyes at the multiple killer theories for JFK, RFK and Marilyn Monroe. I smile indulgently at those that believe Obama was born in Kenya and that 9/11 was an inside job. Telling me the moon landing I watched when I was six years old was all faked will make me laugh. But I love a good story, so I gobble up movies like JFK and Capricorn One because, for me, it's as much how these people spin up the stories to try and make all the "facts" fit in their convoluted stories. In this book, the author carefully builds up each theory, citing names, sources, etc, then systematically tears each one back down again. And through it all, I could hear each conspiracy theorist screaming, "YOU FOOL! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!" like some ersatz Charlton Heston revealing that Soylent Green is people. Anyway, I was very much educated by this book while also being entertained by it. You really can't ask for more, can you?
...a sweeping tour of the paranoid style in Western politics by David Aaronovitch, a British journalist. In his account, which runs from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” down to the obsession over Obama’s birth certificate, the pendulum of paranoia is constantly swinging from right to left and back again, depending on which faction feels more powerless and put-upon. Mr. Aaronovitch deconstructs a dizzying array of conspiracy theories in these pages with unsparing logic, common sense and at times exasperated wit. In the book, Aaronovitch tackles the intriguing question of why well-educated, reasonable people sometimes believe "perfectly ridiculous things."
Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere--from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism, the idea of conspiracy can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence. Journalist David Aaronovitch sees a pattern among these inflammatory theories. They use similarly murky methods to insinuate their claims: they link themselves to the supposed conspiracies of the past; they carefully manipulate their evidence, to hide its holes; they rely on the authority of dubious academic sources. Most important, they elevate their believers to an elite--a group of people able to see beyond lies to a higher reality. In this entertaining and enlightening book, Aaronovitch carefully probes and explodes a dozen of the major conspiracy theories. He examines why people believe them, and makes an argument for a true skepticism: one based on a thorough knowledge of history and a strong dose of common sense.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)909.08History and Geography History World history 1450/1500-, modern historyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Curious about the persistence of conspiratorial thinking after encountering a man who believed that the moon landings were faked, Aaronovitch begins a lighthearted exploration of what he calls a “period of fashionable conspiracism,” an endeavor that quickly turns more serious. Hoping to understand the psychology of conspiracy theories, what he defines as “the attribution of deliberate agency to something that is more likely to be accidental or unintended” or “the attribution of secret action to one party that might far more reasonably be explained as the less covert and less complicated action of another,” and what makes them often more engaging to popular culture than actual history, in each chapter he delves chronologically into some of the last centuries most infamous hoaxes and myths.
As Aaronovitch explores in depth such paranoid tales as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the idea that FDR had prior knowledge about Pearl Harbor, the secret bloodline of Jesus as described in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and, of course, 9/11 being an inside job, he searches for some of the commonalities each share and hits on some thought-provoking threads. While I wouldn’t call the work prescient exactly (that would risk falling into the “historian’s fallacy” Aaronvitch describes, “the tendency to forget at the time that the actors in a historical drama simply did not know, at the time, what was coming next”), there was a lot that rang true for me as misinformation has only strengthened its grip on the publication imagination during the 2010s.
In particular, he describes the way that conspiracy theories can be used to aid an authoritarian regime. Aaronovitch’s account of the Kagonovitch trial in 1940s USSR, for instance, in which a prominent bureaucrat in the Stalinist regime was accused of being embroiled in a Trotskyist plot of sabotage, illustrates how conspiracy can become a convenient tool by the authorities by allowing them to explain away their failures on perfidious outside forces. I can see echoes of this in the Pizzagate and Qanon accounts of a deep state being behind the Trump administration’s lack of success.
In addition, the slow evolution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from 19th century French anti-Napoleonic literature to antisemitic ur-text through the plagiarism and repurposing of numerous bad faith actors in Germany and Russia, reminded me of the mutation of memes online in the 21st century. On that note, it was interesting to see Aaronovitch’s discussion of the capital-I Internet’s effect on 9/11 conspiracy theories, bringing into orbit strange political bedfellows, and how such drawings together of paranoid ideas across the conspiratorial landscape has only increased as algorithms rewarded engagement regardless of its truth.
It’s in Aaronovitch’s conclusion, I think, where the work's major weaknesses are shown, lacking a strong argument of how our culture may remedy this increasingly sinister situation. As he attempts to brush off such “alternative truths” as merely false assumptions broken by critical thinking, the last decade of mostly unmoderated digital disinformation, is a simplistic hope. In any case, though, Voodoo Histories as a whole is a loose but fascinating collection of essays that provides some valuable information even a decade later. ( )