we turn now to a new book about conspiracy theories and their role in American political history take a look at this political paranoia and conspiracy theories in particular have been a part of uh the United States since before there was a United States going back to the colonial era across the political Spectrum leftwing right-wing and the center um it's we're not just talking about people on the fringes or Outsiders but often people at the very heart of American Amic power I know that conspiracy theories have been an entrenched part of American politics for centuries from
the Red Scare to the 911 truther author Jesse Walker argues these beliefs aren't theories to be debunked so much as folklore to be examined he joins me now uh in studio thanks so much for being here uh one of the things I love about your book and I have it here I got it yesterday um is that it it draws on everything sociology anthropology political science uh history what brought you to this topic of of paranoia and conspiracy theories oh my sometimes I'm not quite sure it's like a hidden hidden hand room me towards it
right the u i I've been reading conspiracy theories of different kinds since I was a teenager you know I was actually reading serious investigations of like the FBI the CIA stuff that came out in the 70s after Watergate and often they were next to other books on the shelves were a bit more dubious but we're still fun to read um and uh I I guess I kept exploring uh and and the result is your book now we got some polling on this this is a PPP poll uh where they interviewed voters in uh April of
2013 51% of these voters uh say that some sort of larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination I'm actually surprised it's so low I'm surprised it's not like 75% used to be higher yeah and then 28% of Voters believe uh there is a new world order I I don't know if that's like the trilateral commission or Illuminati so many to choose from and then 15% of Voters say uh that uh the government or the media uh adds controlling technology to TV content perhaps I mean if that would make people watch I might be
uh up for that but why do people actually buy into these theories well how do they sort of operate well it there's no one single answer to that I mean they come from different um from different places um but I'll say there's three things that are important to keep in mind first of all we are naturally pattern seeking people we look for narratives we when we see uh to signals we try to turn it into uh something we can make sense of and is that because our we don't really have any control over our lives
that fate actually sort of determines everything well to say that's the the second thing is that it's especially um when you're dealing with something that frightens you or with people that frighten you or a situation that frightens you you're naturally going to come to a more fearful story and then the third thing is people do actually conspire sometimes it's not like being afraid of zombies or you know werewolves there's enough historical examples of people conspiring that people say well maybe this one's true too yeah yeah and you talk about the 1970s for instance as the
Golden Age of what you call enemy above conspiracy theories what and you outlined five of them uh could you talk a little bit about that the sort of categories of conspiracy theories the five general categories I have sort of the same narratives that keep happening again and again are the enemy above which is seeing a conspiracy at you know the government or powerful corporations and so on the enemy below which are the conspiracies people uh conspiracy theories that powerful people have um the enemy outside uh the Enemy Within and then the benevolent conspiracy which people
don't talk about as much but there are ideas of you know secret societies guiding America towards a grander destiny um aliens Angels so on where do you think we are now in terms terms of our conspiracy theories you talk about the 1970s and 1970s 1970s and 90s as that golden age of sort of enemy above and I'm sure Nixon did a lot to help that where do you think we are now it it well we don't have historical perspective on where we are right now but I will say the two things that are sort of
interesting to watch as these kind of NSA Revelations come out first of all people with good reason are suspicious about what their government is doing and second of all the government is scared of leakers I mean things like this Insider threat program it's it's like a replay of some of the like the Red Scare and lavender scare and so on that I read about in the book um and that's an example of sort of an enemy below or Enemy Within phenomenon yeah sort of Washington terrified of itself paranoid it of its own self if you
could talk about and maybe tease out a couple of uh conspiracy theories there was one uh in the 80s and ' 9s and maybe it's still around certainly when I get into uh cabs sometimes cab drivers talk about this puracy that the government created uh HIV and AIDS yeah well I mean that's uh that has many different sources um I me one that I the one place that sort of comes up in the book was in the 1980s the idea of you know black do I mean sorry white doctors and injecting black babies with AIDS
and I write about how obviously this wasn't true but this comes on the heels of so much you know abusive and high-handed treatment of black people by white doctors including things like the Tuskegee experiment that makes it easier for stories that to catch on even when the evidence isn't there for them right and is it your sense that sort of modern technology or what role does modern technology be it social media or just the mere fact that we can do all sorts of things uh does that play a role in conspiracy theories or the rampant
of conspiracy theories well certainly helps transmit them you know I mean and it's uh I mean some of the stuff I write about in this book I'm fortunate that sociologists went out and tracked Rumors in the 1940s and so on nowadays you can watch it happened in real time on Facebook so I I don't know that that um that that means there's more paranoia but it does mean also that different stories can mix together more easily you can have uh the UFO people and the militia people and you know black nationalists and so on listening
to one another and mixing the different stories together and that's what you say that these cut across all socioeconomic and racial uh backgrounds I think maybe one popular theory if you're on the left at least is that you know the people on the right have their conspiracy theories and then if you're on the right you believe uh things about George Soros or whatever but you think it's it cuts across all boundaries yeah and I think the center has its own conspiracy theories I think uh The Establishment has conspiracy theories that often you don't recognize as
conspiracy theories till a few decades later and you say wow when we were really into you know the satanic panic and the 1980s that was insane but uh it yeah I think um since the beginning of the United States if in fact before the beginning of the United States I go into the colonial era um political paranoia has uh disper permeated uh political life and surrounded those early interactions uh that uh Americans had with Native Americans thinking that they were essentially Satan's spawn or co-conspirators with Satan yeah I mean that that was the most extreme
version was there was a story that um Satan had actually settled uh the new world with pagans from the old world because they were the gospel was spreading there but even beyond that even beyond that stuff that's sort of self-evidently nutty there was this natural tendency I mean because there was a such thing as Indian attacks you know to be worried about the next Indian attack and to imagine um different tribes uh collaborating with each other in secret and um often to sort of mistake um the Indian social structure it's thinking it's going to look
like the Western uh social structure so you imagine um an influential Indian as a grand conspirator a sort of a loose Network as an Empire and that fed into all kinds of stories which I we see reverberations of them today I think popular conspiracy theories today the truthers what do you make of that one I you know I mean the the truthers I I I call them a sideshow in this because I I feel like um while they're fun to read about and and to look at the sort of paranoia that really gripped the country
after 911 was the kind that had people seeing spilled coffee sweetener in the um in the airport lounge and thinking that you know Al Qaeda was planning an attack back right there right then you know I I write about um one thing in Texas they found like the sort of Jerry rig Contraption and someone's mailbox uh and there was they it turned out to be a child's science project but um not only did they sort of shut down the area but even after they found out what it was they still confiscated it just in case
just in case and that to me I mean that's sort of the example of the political Center was having you its own conspiracy theories then um and we were I mean I certainly got worried after 911 right and and that was in sort of a time of national panic but you also make the argument that in times of Peace uh still these sort of conspiracy theories abound as well yeah and in the 1990s it comes between the Cold War and then the war on terror a time of relative Prosperity but that was a golden age
of I mean not just things like the New World Order theories and so on but also in fiction you know the xfiles was a very popular TV show um so I I think peace can breed nightmares too yeah Illuminati uh I I have a a friend who I Mentor actually and she swears that Beyonce is in the Illuminati I I don't even know what the Illuminati is I guess I've heard it every once in a while in rap lyrics but talk about that yeah that's that's a big topic um because the historical group The Bavarian
Illuminati was started in 1776 in Bavaria sort of a rationalist organization secret society um was then cracked down upon because you know the government didn't like having the secret secet society around and ever since then there have been theories about it surviving and organizing the French Revolution uh being behind Thomas Jefferson when it came to the United States so planning on some sort of uh massive uh Invasion that would include like starting slave revolts you know across the South um and it it's taken different forms over the years um in the mid 70s uh a
very funny book illuminus was written which is a parody of conspiracy theories and that kind of brought the illum Illuminati back into popular culture and and then recently it's been very big in you know hip hop as you mentioned Jay-Z had a lyric said I said I was amazing not a Mason right because he was tired of the uh but yeah so that's um they they keep coming up in the book and so what is the danger of of conspiracy theories is there a danger or are they just sort of harmless folklore uh well it
depends I mean I mean for one thing there's nothing wrong with having a theory about a possible conspiracy we're sitting here in the Washington Post people here have exposed stored conspiracies in the past um and there's and there's absolutely nothing wrong with uh you know challenging you know an official narrative trying to say be skeptical and uh say I I want to find out if this is the full truth the flip side is you also have to be skeptical about all the alternative narratives that people come up with um and as far as dangers I
mean it's the danger of that could happen whenever um somebody gets becomes a True Believer yeah birthers uh what do you make of of that whole movement birthers yeah that's that's faded a bit well I guess now that we have the Ted Cruz birther that's not Al that's not a conspirac renounced his Canada and all its works I I have um you know I think I mentioned like three or four different sort of reasons for birtherism Beyond just some people you know thinking the evidence is true because they haven't looked at all the debunking it
actually originated among supporters of Hillary Clinton before it migrated to the right this idea that one fatal thing they wanted a Magic Bullet that would you know without the pain of political persuasion you could bring someone down on top of that obviously there's the sort of fear of the out I mean the enemy outside I mentioned of of the foreign uh and murrian candidate sort of thing yeah and so when Barack Obama who in addition to being half black um grew up you know at different places like Indonesia I mean the state that he's from
Hawaii is the one American state that's not in the Americas someone who's um sort of uncomfortable with the idea of a multicultural America is GNA see birtherism as a I mean it's metaphorically true for that person even if it isn't true true yeah and so that helps stories like that spread yeah is it any I guess is it worth it trying to debunk conspiracy theories or is it just a matter of even if you put information out there it only fuels The Conspiracy Theory well I I mean it's you could say that about any story
that's not true is it worth it to debunk it um and I I think that um yeah there are conspiracy theorists who are very are True Believers and will grind their heels in there are conspiracy theorists who are very open to evidence you know and they they just like examining they'll say well maybe this guy killed JFK oh well maybe not you know so I mean I I'm I'm all for debunking stories that are not true including conspiracy stories um but sometimes I I don't know if it's worthwhile trying to debunk the idea the president
is a lizard man at that point you're in like a religious area more than a a normal that that's more a matter of faith I think for people who it and you certainly talk about how pop culture and and films and novels sort of feed into conspiracy theor and they feed on them I mean that's just part of how stories are are transmitted I I think that um both in the sort of the literal sense that you have uh people who like read like HP Lovecraft horror stories and think the Necronomicon is real and they
start working it in but also we when we we sort of organize um those narratives I mentioned earlier based on the sort of the narratives we've seen before and so what we've seen in the movies you know or read in a book obviously influences um I think it's influences the way true stories are told you know I mean I think that there are stories in newspapers and books that are absolutely true but people they're looking for that threea structure that a Hollywood screenwriter uses Jesse thank you so much for chatting with me today good luck
with your book is it out already or it comes out today okay awesome we are on top of it thanks so much for joining me uh today uh to check out his book here it is United States of paranoia for more on those conspiracies it's available today on Amazon or wherever you want to buy it also thanks to Dr Corey a bear we had some tech issues there and Teresa rangam for being here tweet your thoughts on today's show using the hashtag post back see you back here tomorrow
