me ask you about Q Anon it is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that now can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true in its entirety I know nothing about a q Anon Republican senator Ben sass said quote Q Anon is nuts and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories why not just say it's crazy and not true it may be right I just don't know about Q Anon you do know let me just tell you what I do here
about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia and I agree with that I mean I do agree with that and I agree with it's not a satanic uh pedophile you don't know that That Was Then president Donald Trump during a 2020 town hall with NBC's Savannah Guthrie Trump's refusal to disavow Q Anon just one of the many conspiracy theories he's stoked and promoted over the years but our next guest as conspiracies not unique to this time in our politics but rather etched into America's DNA joining us now is author Colin Dickey his latest book
is titled under the eye of power how fear of secret societies shapes American democracy Collins great to have you on and you kind of draw this line way back in history to where we are today where we our politics seem to be consumed at least on one side of the aisle with conspiracies where do you say it began in this country I mean I think you can go all the way back to Salem like Salem's whole The Witch Trials were all about this idea that your ordinary neighbor who is just like everybody else was secretly
in a cabal with Satan to do harm to you so I think you go all the way back I mean our founding moment the American in Revolution you had people arguing that the entire American Revolution was a French plot to secretly install a French King in the English crown so we've had these from the very beginning and they're they as you say they go all the way back into our DNA and have been deployed by some of our most famous and renowned and respected leaders including President Washington and his Farewell Address not certainly in the
manner that we've seen Donald Trump use them but there's always been this sort of notion of uh conspiratorial forces at work to undermine what that president is doing yeah exactly I mean Washington was one of many people who believed firmly that the Illuminati uh with this sort of debunked defunct uh German group that was uh suppressed in the 1770s was behind the French Revolution that that was the reason the French Revolution had gotten so crazy um our first sort of contested election 1800 between Adams and Jefferson both of them had people sort of arguing that
the other guy was an alumni student so it's yeah it's uh it goes all the way back um we know of some Modern conspiracy theories Kennedy assassination of course we're seeing on the graphic there the Red Scare the Communist Witch Hunt of the 50s but your book notes that it really the Civil War was a time of real conspiracy theories in the country fueling the discussion around the conflict between the states tell us about that yeah the the 1850s were a time when we just had sort of conspiracy theories on on every front so in
the north you had um people arguing including Lincoln and the Republicans that um there was a what they called a slave accuracy this group of um powerful wealthy slave owners who had who are not just like powerful but had infected government and were completely undermining the American government from within meanwhile in the South you had people arguing that the abolitionists were this um massive secret Network that was doing all sorts of damage to the American population and you had this third conspiracy theory which was run by the know-nothings who blamed sort of everything on the
Catholics and the um the pope sort of exerting his influence from afar so the 1850s just had these three different conspiracy theories that were fighting for for dominance and It ultimately only ended in the Civil War Colin whether you're talking uh then in the 1850s or in the present day what is the power what's the secret sauce of these conspiracy theories and why are people so gullible to them and just sink deeper and deeper into them to the point where the a president United States couldn't even deny the fact that this stuff is crazy yeah
I don't even know that they're Global I think people are looking for something that gives them a kind of order and sense in the world and even if that sense is something malevolent it still sort of provides a narrative for the chaos and I think that that's really appealing and that's so when you're sort of trying to sort of debunk these things it's more than just the facts you have to sort of think about what are people trying to get out of this conspiracy theory and how can we sort of undo that and then get
to the facts so Colin given everything you know everything you've studied for this book what do you make of the current conspiracy theories we've been talking a lot this morning about a potential indictment of the former president for everything that happened around the 2020 election and we know some of the outlandish conspiracy theories that are now Landing people in jail by the way you know people saying that there was an Italian satellite controlling voting machines or that China had worked its way in through thermostats to somehow control votes I don't even understand that one but
that said some of those conspiracy theories made their way to the Oval Office it was the kind of thing Donald Trump was hearing and repeating yeah exactly and um you know you you open the segment with Q Anon and that that idea of the sort of Secret cabal of um you know child abusers is something that we saw in the 1980s with the satanic Panic it's something we saw in the 1830s uh when a Convent in Boston was burned To The Ground by people who thought it was a you know basically an 1830s version of
pizzagate this so This these same sort of theories get spun over and over again with with new details and new technology but they become the same thing over and over again such a fascinating book it's titled under the eye of power how fear of secret societies shapes American democracy [Music]
