Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

This is definitely one of the best books on the topic of conspiracy theories that I have yet read. Although several years old now, having come out in 2010, it remains as relevant today as it was then. Chapter by chapter, theory by theory, this book examines the history of the big hitters. JFK, Princess Diana, Madonna, the bloodline of Jesus, the Birther movement, and the Clinton deaths. All of that and more. Rather than simply going into what the conspiracy theories are, it also goes into why we believe them.

This all leads to the biggest, and most recent and relevant theory to most of the reader's lives. The 9/11 Truther movement.

The 9/11 chapter is likely the longest one in the book, only with the possible exception of the Protocols of show more the Elders of Zion chapter. The book ends on the 9/11 conspiracy for a reason. All the chapters prior are leading up to what constitutes conspiracy thought, and 9/11 draws upon most of these traditions. Ultimately the conclusion drawn is the same that [a: Jon Ronson|1218|Jon Ronson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1428023511p2/1218.jpg] reaches in the brilliant [b: Them: Adventures with Extremists|1823|Them Adventures with Extremists|Jon Ronson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1400199696s/1823.jpg|5946].

Conspiracies are ultimately a comfort to us, as they imply that the world is under some sort of control rather than simply predicated upon random chance. Conspiracies allow us the knowledge that, perhaps, some could figure this out and work for good. Conspiracies tell us a lot about how people think, what they believe, and their stations in life. They're an interesting topic, for sure, but a very, very dangerous one. show less

This was an extremely interesting and insightful read. Aaronovitch examines a multitude of conspiracy theories, their believers, and the effect these fringe ideas have on politics, history, and the general population. He focuses mostly on US and Britain, with some forays into Western Europe. He examines it all with a skeptical eye, which works for me, because when it comes to conspiracies I am a HUGE skeptic, but for those with a less skeptic mindset, he may be biased, in that he believes that very few conspiracies actually exist. For me, the most intriguing chapters were the ones on modern conspiracy theories, ie. during the Clinton years, the 9/11 Truth movement, and the Birthers. Aaronovitch examines conspiracy theories from both the show more right and the left; there is no partisan bias. What emerges is a portrait of a mindset where those on the extremes on both sides let their paranoia defeat their common sense, with results that are sometimes harmless, sometimes dangerous, whether to themselves or society as a whole. This is an important book and I highly recommend it. Four and a half stars. show less

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 show more 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? show less

From the perspective of 2023, Voodoo History, English journalist David Aaronovitch’s interesting but slightly disjointed 2009 critical analysis of conspiracy theory through the lens of historical memory feels a bit quaint. However, he does provide an insightful glimpse of the evolution of misinformation in the first decades of the 21st century and perhaps some of the currents that presaged the later trends we are currently living through.

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 show more 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. show less

Sadly, this was not the book I wanted to read, which would be a book about the seductive appeal of the conspiracy theory and how to distinguish plausible from implausible conspiracies. Instead, it’s a series of Western conspiracy theories that are wrong. Often they involve Jews. Aaronovitch is more detailed with respect to the more recent ones (Princess Diana, some incidents probably familiar to British readers but not to me, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, etc.) than the earlier ones, though I did learn the full history of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (they were not just made up, they were recycled made-up—plagiarized from accounts of another conspiracy). The most interesting thing I learned was probably that the current show more historical consensus is that the Reichstag Fire was not itself a Nazi plot, though it was exploited by the Nazis for advantage.

But the book wasn’t satisfying because it wasn’t the book I wanted to read, the one that acknowledged that conspiracies do exist, but that they’re generally (1) small, (2) short-lived through betrayal, disagreement or other causes (though occasionally long-enough-lived to do their dirty work: Watergate; Iran/Contra; etc.), (3) often nongovernmental (Enron), and (4) protected by the difficulty of wading through available information and the interests that others have in not taking action (Madoff and the SEC). Aaronovitch makes the nice point that the “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary Clinton identified was in fact vast and right-wing, but that its major funder Scaife was quite open about what he wanted done to the Clintons. Is it a conspiracy if they tell you what they intend to do, like Republicans deciding to rebrand healthcare and adopt the same talking points in unison? Occam’s Razor inclines to incompetence over conspiracy, yes, but I would have liked more on how to deal with pervasive distrust in government without acceding to ridiculous conspiracy theories or ignoring bad things government has actually done. show less

An intelligent, well-researched book about conspiracies, their origins, what they mean, and why they matter. Aaranovich covers both the biggies (JFK, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and a few I'd never even heard of (the strange death of Marilyn Monroe, the murder of Hilda Murrell). He knows his material well, having a firm grasp on the various rhetorical gambits and logical fallacies that seem to reappear in almost every conspiracy theory. Presenting himself as a sincere advocate for rational, independent thought, he manages to keep his head about him as he patiently reviewing the available evidence about him without getting upset at these rather ridiculous theories' very existence. And some of these theories are truly ridiculous; show more there's plenty hear for anyone who's spent an afternoon surfing bizarre conspiracy Web sites just to laugh at them. The author's research also takes him to some genuinely interesting and unexpected places, a shadowy world of ideologically-motivated fraudsters and kooks that might as well be respectable history's seedy underbelly.

If I've got a complaint about "Voodoo Histories," it's about its sequencing. While Aaranovich writes elegantly and includes bits of cogent analysis throughout this book, it isn't until its conclusion that he begins to elucidate why so many people find so conspiracy theories so attractive. While much of his analysis is spot-on, it probably should have come earlier. Without this context, some readers might mistake "Voodoo Histories" for a useful but but insufficiently incisive recounting of and rebuttal to some annoying persistent popular historical myths. It isn't until the final chapter of this book that Aaranovich really goes in for the kill: those who treat conspiracies as quirky "counternarrative" to official histories ignore the harm they do. The myths of the Third Reich, to use the most famous example, drew heavily from conspiracy theories and conspiracist logic. Although Aaranovich concedes that it's sometimes difficult to see the world with clear, reasonable eyes, he argues that the price of refusing to do so, of succumbing to sloppy, emotionally reassuring popular narratives, is just too high. I tend to think that after finishing "Voodoo Histories," many of his readers will be inclined to agree with him. show less

Has the Roman Catholic Church conspired to hide the fact that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a baby? Was George Bush behind the attacks on 9/11? Did the CIA kill JFK? Did FDR know beforehand about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Is Barack Obama covering up his Kenyan birth? Obviously, for any sane individual, the answer to all of these questions is no. And yet millions of otherwise intelligent individuals buy into moronic conspiracy theories like these. Why? That's exactly the question that David Aaronovitch answers in this book. He also shows us why conspiracy theories are so dangerous: because fake history can change minds, influence events, and make real history. I highly recommend this book; don't be fooled!