#288: Of Panic and Paranoia
The litany of contemporary conspiracy theories runs long: Pizzagate, QAnon, chemtrails, \u201cjet fuel can\u2019t melt steel beams,\u201d \u201cbirds aren\u2019t real.\u201d Some of these are funny\u2014the rumor that Avril Lavigne and/or Paul McCartney have been replaced by doppelg\xe4ngers\u2014and some have deadly consequences, like the mass murders motivated by replacement theory or the Chronicles of the Elders of Zion. We might like to think this is a recent phenomenon, but the first American president to espouse a conspiracy theory was actually George Washington, a freemason who believed that the Illuminati caused the French Revolution. In his new book, Under the Eye of Power, Colin Dickey asks, \u201cWhat if paranoia, particularly a paranoia of secret, subversive societies, is not just peripheral to the functioning of democracy, but at its very heart?\u201d
Go beyond the episode:
- Colin Dickey\u2019s Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy
- Listen to our previous conversation about cryptids, aliens, and other weird encounters
- Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from conspiracy theories? Belief in quack Covid cures and New Age elixirs, which Dickey wrote about for us last year
- The \u201cgroomers\u201d conspiracy draws on a long history of trans- and homophobia
- For more about the Satanic Panic, listen to this episode of the You\u2019re Wrong About podcast
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