The Paranoid Style: The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories in American Politics

An interesting piece from Kate Zernike at the New York Times. An excerpt:

The fact that many Americans — and many Republicans in particular — have told pollsters that they doubt the president’s citizenship is less surprising when you consider the sizable percentages of Americans who subscribe to other conspiracy theories, said Robert Alan Goldberg, a history professor at the University of Utah and the author of “Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America.”

Eighty percent of Americans, he said, believe that President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, rather than a lone gunman, as a government commission affirmed. Thirty percent believe that the government covered up aliens’ landing in Roswell, N.M., and a third of American blacks believe that government scientists created AIDS as a weapon of black genocide. Sept. 11, of course, has inspired conspiracy theories — it was plotted, variously, by “the Jews,” the Bush administration or Saddam Hussein.

By definition, Professor Goldberg said, a conspiracy theory is a belief that cunning forces are seeking to bend history to their will, provoking terror attacks or economic calamity to move the world in the direction they wish.

“I look at this birther conspiracy as a typical example,” he said. “This is far beyond the issue of whether this is a legitimate president. The real issue for them is this belief that this is a ploy by this hidden group to get power, to move Americans toward socialism or globalism or multiculturalism using Barack Obama as a pawn.”

RTWT at the link.