context for M&D: "Conspiracies so vast"

[pynchonoid]

[...] Are we living in a golden age of conspiracy
theory? And if so, what stands behind this apparent
upsurge in global anxiety? Fortunately, no shortage of
observers has turned their attention to such
questions. As Syracuse University political scientist
Michael Barkun writes in "A Culture of Conspiracy:
Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America"
(California), the latest in a recent spate of academic
studies on the subject, "obsessive concern with the
magnitude of hidden evil powers" is just what one
might expect in a turn-of-the-millennium culture "rife
with apocalyptic anxiety." 

Conspiracies have been around for as long as there
have been people to plot. Yet the courtly coups and
palace intrigues that animate the pages of
Machiavelli's "The Prince" were very different from
the more generalized theories of conspiracy that first
began to circulate, ironically, in that crucible of
modernity known as the Age of Reason. The 18th-century
Enlightenment saw the emergence of vague, shadowy
rumors of international machinations, lurid accounts
of the collusion of Freemasons, Jesuits, or radical
philosophers, ghastly tales of plots hatched in cells
throughout the world to infiltrate governments, topple
kings, eradicate religion, and corrupt morals and
beliefs.

Whereas the older plots were usually localized (and
often genuine), reflecting a face-to-face world in
which public life was controlled by the actions of
powerful individuals, the newer variants tended to be
open-ended and elusive in their aims. Titillating,
consoling, and disturbing all at once, these were
accounts well-suited to the newly expanding print
culture of the 18th century, which brought together
formerly isolated groups into virtual communities of
opinion now sharing the same newspapers, novels,
placards, and pamphlets. The new conspiracies also
traveled well by word of mouth -- thriving among the
18th century's rapidly growing populations, in which
distrust was fueled by the anonymity of urban
environments and insecurity heightened by mobility,
dislocation, and bewildering socioeconomic change.

In many cases these new tales were entirely
fictitious, like the rumors that consumed Paris in the
1750s that servants of the crown were snatching
vagrant children to provide baths of blood for King
Louis XV. In other instances they were more
immediately plausible, as with the widespread
conspiracy rhetoric among American colonists, who drew
on decades of distrust of Georgian kings and colonial
agents.

In still other cases, conspiracy theories metastasized
from an original germ of truth. Fears of the
Illuminati, for example, still invoked to this day,
were originally fed by the discovery in the 1780s of
an actual conspiracy led by a Bavarian professor at
the University of Ingolstadt, Adam Weishaupt. His
brotherhood of "enlightened ones," the Society of the
Illuminati, aimed to infiltrate established Masonic
lodges throughout Europe with the goal of
disseminating republican and anticlerical beliefs. The
conspiracy was discovered long before it could have
any real effect. But this did nothing to stem the
alarm that spread in its wake. [...]

Peter Knight, a professor of American Studies at the
University of Manchester, who has written widely on
conspiracy culture, points out that today's conspiracy
language is "often a form of popular sociology, a way
for people to talk about cause, agency, blame, and
structure" in a bafflingly complex world.
Globalization in particular "breaks the [perceived]
connection between cause and effect" by multiplying
the array of economic and social forces acting on our
lives. Conspiracy theories piece these connections
together, expressing a psychologically reassuring
"reason, a structure, a force behind events."

The tremendous increase in access to information (and
disinformation) generated by the Internet also bears
comparison to the Enlightenment's knowledge revolution
and its attendant creation of virtual communities and
disembodied publics. In the same way that conspiracy
theories united 18th-century audiences in shared
fascination and horror, conspiracy theories today are
an integral part of the entertainment industry,
providing a mysterious and tantalizing twist on the
daily spin. At the same time they feed on a
post-Watergate distrust of elites that has close
analogues with Enlightened suspicion of authorities of
all kinds -- be they clerics, aristocrats,
intellectuals, or kings.

In "A Culture of Conspiracy," Michael Barkun points to
another important factor: the end of the Cold War.
Until 1989, he observes, we lived in a "neat,
dichotomized moral universe" with a clearly defined
enemy. Much as the secularizing forces of the
Enlightenment made it more difficult to see the world
as the exclusive battleground between God and Satan,
the demise of communism has infinitely expanded the
field of potential plotters. Where we once saw only
commies and capitalist pigs, we now see a more varied
and complex array of enemies. [...]  

...read it all:

Conspiracies so vast 
Conspiracy theory was born in the Age of Enlightenment
and has metastasized in the Age of the Internet. Why
won't it go away?   
By Darrin M. McMahon, 2/1/2004
<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/01/conspiracies_so_vast/>

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