Conspiracy Theories PDF
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conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 3 Conspiracy Theories ROBIN RAMSAY POCKET ESSENTIALS conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 2 Other Pocket Essentials by the same author: The Rise of New Labour Who Shot JFK? conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 1 Conspiracy Theories www.pocketessentials.com conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 4 This edition published in 2006 by Pocket Essentials P.O.Box 394,Harpenden,Herts,AL5 1XJ www.pocketessentials.com Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing, P.O.Box 257,Howe Hill Road,North Pomfret,Vermont 05053 © Robin Ramsay 2006 The right of Robin Ramsay to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced,stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means (electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 904048 65 X EAN 978 1 904048 65 7 24681097531 Typeset by Avocet Typeset,Chilton,Aylesbury,Bucks Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPD Ltd,Ebbw Vale,Wales conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 5 Contents 1 The World Is Not Like That 7 The World is Not Like That;Conspiracy is Normal Politics;One of those No-Weatherman-Required Situations 2 I Am Paranoid but Am I Paranoid Enough? 35 Paranoia and the Paranormal 3 From Blue Skies to Dark Skies 53 4 I Can’t See Them But I Know They Are There 67 Why the Right?;The EU;Uncle Sam Needs Us;BAP;The Official Conspiracy Theory 5 It’s the State,Dummy 93 Teaching Aliens to Line-dance;Mind Control;David Icke 6 Disinformation 111 Disinformation about UFOs 7 Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracies 124 A Conspiracy Culture?;Concluding Comments 8 Index 153 • 5 • conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 6 conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 7 The World is Not Like That The conspiracy theory boom of the last few years shows no sign of abating.Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code,20 million copies sold world-wide, which four million people have read in the UK,has ensured that.The fact that a novel about a conspiracy theory,involving a group which doesn’t exist, could generate so much heat is another sign of conspiracy theories creeping into the mainstream.Even Polly Toynbee in The Guardian felt obliged to warn us of the pernicious nature of conspiracy theories. I agree with her: they are pernicious.Or,rather,to anticipate one of my arguments below, some of them are. The all-encompassing variety which offer to explain great chunks of history and politics by the secret machinations of small groups – the Jews,the Masons etc. – are pernicious. Before Dan Brown’s naff novel it was the events of 9/11/2001 which gave birth to a great reef of theories in cyberspace; before that The X- Filesin the mid 1990s boosted the number and visibility of conspiracy theories in popular culture.These are the major landmarks in the development of the ‘conspiracy culture’ and two of the three are fiction. This ‘culture’s’ distinguishing characteristic is the ten- dency to assume either that the deaths of all celebrities and all major geopolitical events are the result of conspiracies, or that all such events might be conspiracies. • 7 • conspiracytheories 13/12/05 8:35 am Page 8 CONSPIRACY THEORIES Take the death of Princess Diana.The motives of those chiefly involved in the conspiracy theorising were mixed. The main impetus behind this undoubtedly came from Dodi Fayed’s father,Mohammed El Fayed,and is perhaps under- standable as the reaction of a grieving parent,with several hundred million pounds to spend,who has suddenly lost his son and his son’s extremely glamorous girlfriend in a one- car crash.Encouraging Fayed’s beliefs were some of the fol- lowers of Lyndon LaRouche Jr, a strange American conspiracy theorist whom I discuss below,who sees the evil hand of the British Royal family behind much of the world’s troubles. For LaRouche’s followers it is axiomatic that the British Royals killed Di.Conspiracy theorists seized on the words of Richard Tomlinson, the former MI6 officer who told the world of a British intelligence plan to kill the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a tunnel,using a bright light to disorientate the driver of his car.(One witness from Paris had reported seeing a flash just before Di’s car crashed.) Recently the former MI5 officer Annie Machon has stated that she and her partner, David Shayler, suspect MI6’s involvement (although they offer no evidence).1The driver of the car,Henri Paul,has been discovered to have re- ceived large amounts of unaccountable money and is sus- pected of being in the pay of MI62; and the photographer James Andanson,the suspected driver of the white Fiat car, which was seen near the incident,has died a bizarre death.3 Although the major media are no longer pursuing the story, there are still many Internet sites discussing her death and the ‘no conspiracy’ verdict reached by the French legal inquiry and the ‘no conspiracy’verdict we will • 8 •
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