In 1940s New York, FBI alarm bells are ringing: the Existentialists are coming! J. Edgar Hoover has to know: what the hell is this Existentialism all about anyway – and is it some kind of code for Communism? He sets his agents on the trail of first Jean-Paul Sartre (1945) and then Albert Camus (1946). […]
How can we reconcile the sense that recent conspiracy theories can appear – to put not too fine a point on it – crazy, and clear evidence that they have had a broad, if often transient, appeal? Since 9/11, a succession of conspiracy theories have alleged that major incidents like the Aurora cinema shooting, the […]
Spotted in the media this week by the research team, the following story in The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/13/philae-comet-lander-alien-cover-up-conspiracy-theories-emerge
A public talk by Dr Michael Hagemeister (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) with a response from Dr Reinhard Markner (Universität Innsbruck). Investigations into the origin and early history of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” often lead to the border between fiction (or mystification) and historical fact. Furthermore, one can observe how this border is crossed: […]
This talk explored Mark Twain’s perspective on conspiracy theory in late-nineteenth century America. In Twain’s time, public attitudes towards conspiracy theory went through a somewhat unusual change. Namely, conspiracy theory was becoming increasingly identified with amusement and entertainment. Figures such as Josiah Strong and Ignatius Donnelly drew enormous crowds and sold bestselling books by offering […]
On Tuesday 14th October the writer and broadcaster David Aaronovitch visited the project and gave this public lecture on conspiracy theories in an age of transparency, and discussed more recent conspiracy theories. He also discussed developments since he wrote his book, “Voodoo Histories”.
Project Director Professor David Runciman spoke to the Humanities Society at Wolfson College, Cambridge University in May 2014. Arguments about climate change are rife with conspiracy theories. There are those who think the whole thing is a giant hoax: a scam cooked up by environmentalists and left-wing scientists to empower governments and rip off consumers. […]
Since the time of the abbé Barruel, the French Revolution – the source of democratic claims eventually the world over – has been unmasked as the outcome of a dark conspiracy. This talk examines some of the contemporary legacies of this claim about the secret agenda of democratic self-rule, with a focus on some famous […]
Professor Olmsted’s (Professor and Chair of History at the University of California, Davis) talk examines British and American anticommunist conspiracy theories in the 1920s and 1930s. In both countries, former wartime intelligence agency chiefs set up private intelligence networks in the post-World War I era to spy upon and blacklist radicals — and, not incidentally, […]
Are conspiracy theories overtaking deliberative societies, inflaming discourse and degrading democracy? How much more prone to violence are conspiracy theorists? Which political party is more likely to traffic in conspiratorial talk? Has the Internet ushered in a new era of conspiracy-fueled paranoia? Using original data sources spanning more than a century, Joseph E. Uscinski and […]