Barry Chamish is convinced that Shimon Peres, Israel's
wily old statesman, ordered the assassination of Yitzhak
Rabin, back in 1995, in collaboration with the French. He
points to apparent tampering with evidence. The blood-
stained song sheet in Mr. Rabin's pocket lost its bullet
hole between the night of the murder and the present.
The murderer, Yigal Amir, should have been immediately
recognized by Rabin's bodyguards. He has publicly
attacked his query before. Israel's fierce and fearsome
internal security service, the Shabak, had moles and
agents provocateurs among the plotters. Chamish
published a book about the affair. He travels and lectures
widely, presumably for a fee.
Chamish's paranoia-larded prose is not unique. The
transcripts of Senator Joseph McCarthy's inquisitions are
no less outlandish. But it was the murder of John F.
Kennedy, America's youthful president, that ushered in a
golden age of conspiracy theories.
The distrust of appearances and official versions was
further enhanced by the Watergate scandal in 1973-4.
Conspiracies and urban legends offer meaning and
purposefulness in a capricious, kaleidoscopic,
maddeningly ambiguous, and cruel world. They empower
their otherwise helpless and terrified believers.
New Order one world government, Zionist and Jewish
cabals, Catholic, black, yellow, or red subversion, the
machinations attributed to the freemasons and the
illuminati - all flourished yet again from the 1970's
onwards. Paranoid speculations reached frenzied nadirs
following the deaths of celebrities, such as "Princess Di".
Books like "The Da Vinci Code" (which deals with an
improbable Catholic conspiracy to erase from history the
true facts about the fate of Jesus) sell millions of copies
worldwide.
Tony Blair, Britain's ever righteous prime minister
denounced the "Diana Death Industry". He was referring
to the tomes and films which exploited the wild rumors
surrounding the fatal car crash in Paris in 1997. The
Princess, her boyfriend Dodi al-Fayed, heir to a fortune,
as well as their allegedly inebriated driver were killed in
the accident.
Among the exploiters were "The Times" of London which
promptly published a serialized book by Time magazine
reports. Britain's TV networks, led by Live TV,
capitalized on comments made by al-Fayed's father to the
"Mirror" alleging foul play.
But there is more to conspiracy theories than mass
psychology. It is also big business. Voluntary associations
such as the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society are
past their heyday. But they still gross many millions of
dollars a year.
The monthly "Fortean Times" is the leading brand in
"strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities,
prodigies and portents". It is widely available on both
sides of the Atlantic. In its 29 years of existence it has
covered the bizarre, the macabre, and the ominous with
panache and open-mindedness.
It is named after Charles Fort who compiled unexplained
mysteries from the scientific literature of his age (he died
in 1932). He published four bestsellers in his lifetime and
lived to see "Fortean societies" established in many
countries.
A 12 months subscription to "Fortean Times" costs c. $45.
With a circulation of 60,000, the magazine was able to
spin off "Fortean Television" - a TV show on Britain's
Channel Four. Its reputation was further enhanced when it
was credited with inspiring the TV hit series X-Files and
The Sixth Sense.
"Lobster Magazine" - a bi-annual publication - is more
modest at $15 a year. It is far more "academic" looking
and it sells CD ROM compilations of its articles at
between $80 (for individuals) and $160 (for institutions
and organizations) a piece. It also makes back copies of its
issues available.
Its editor, Robin Ramsay, said in a lecture delivered to the
"Unconvention 96", organized by the "Fortean Times":
"Conspiracy theories certainly are sexy at the moment ...
I've been contacted by five or six TV companies in the
past six months - two last week - all interested in making
programmes about conspiracy theories. I even got a call
from the Big Breakfast Show, from a researcher who had
no idea who I was, asking me if I'd like to appear on it ...
These days we've got conspiracy theories everywhere; and
about almost everything".
But these two publications are the tip of a gigantic and
ever-growing iceberg. "Fortean Times" reviews, month in
and month out, books, PC games, movies, and software
concerned with its subject matter. There is an average of 8
items per issue with a median price of $20 per item.
There are more than 186,600 Web sites dedicated to
conspiracy theories in Google's database of 3 billion
pages. The "conspiracy theories" category in the Open
Directory Project, a Web directory edited by volunteers,
contains hundreds of entries.
There are 1077 titles about conspiracies listed in Amazon
and another 12078 in its individually-operated ZShops. A
new (1996) edition of the century-old anti-Semitic
propaganda pamphlet faked by the Czarist secret service,
"Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", is available
through Amazon. Its sales rank is a respectable 64,000 -
out of more than 2 million titles stocked by the online
bookseller.
In a disclaimer, Amazon states:
"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is classified
under "controversial knowledge" in our store, along with
books about UFOs, demonic possession, and all manner
of conspiracy theories".
Yet, cinema and TV did more to propagate modern
nightmares than all the books combined. The Internet is
starting to have a similar impact compounded by its
networking capabilities and by its environment of
simulated reality - "cyberspace". In his tome, "Enemies
Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America",
Robert Alan Goldberg comes close to regarding the
paranoid mode of thinking as a manifestation of
mainstream American culture.
According to the Internet Movie Database, the first 50 all
time hits include at least one "straight" conspiracy theory
movie (in the 13th place) - "Men in Black" with $587
million in box office receipts. JFK (in the 193rd place)
grossed another $205 million. At least ten other films
among the first 50 revolve around a conspiracy theory
disguised as science fiction or fantasy. "The Matrix" - in
the 28th place - took in $456 million. "The Fugitive"
closes the list with $357 million. This is not counting
"serial" movies such as James Bond, the reification of
paranoia shaken and stirred.
X-files is to television what "Men in Black" is to cinema.
According to "Advertising Age", at its peak, in 1998, a 30
seconds spot on the show cost $330,000 and each chapter
raked in $5 million in ad revenues. Ad prices declined to
$225,000 per spot two years later, according to CMR
Business to Business.
Still, in its January 1998 issue, "Fortune" claimed that "X-
Files" (by then a five year old phenomenon) garnered Fox
TV well over half a billion dollars in revenues. This was
before the eponymous feature film was released. Even at
the end of 2000, the show was regularly being watched by
12.4 million households - compared to 22.7 million
viewers in 1998. But X-files was only the latest, and the
most successful, of a line of similar TV shows, notably
"The Prisoner" in the 1960's.
It is impossible to tell how many people feed off the
paranoid frenzy of the lunatic fringe. I found more than
3000 lecturers on these subjects listed by the Google
search engine alone. Even assuming a conservative
schedule of one lecture a month with a modest fee of $250
per appearance - we are talking about an industry of c.
$10 million.
Collective paranoia has been boosted by the Internet.
Consider the computer game "Majestic" by Electronic
Arts. It is an interactive and immersive game, suffused
with the penumbral and the surreal. It is a Web
reincarnation of the borderlands and the twilight zone -
centered around a nefarious and lethal government
conspiracy. It invades the players' reality - the game
leaves them mysterious messages and "tips" by phone,
fax, instant messaging, and e-mail. A typical round lasts 6
months and costs $10 a month.
Neil Young, the game's 31-years old, British-born,
producer told Salon.com recently:
"... The concept of blurring the lines between fact and
fiction, specifically around conspiracies. I found myself
on a Web site for the conspiracy theory radio show by Art
Bell ... the Internet is such a fabulous medium to blur
those lines between fact and fiction and conspiracy,
because you begin to make connections between things.
It's a natural human reaction - we connect these dots
around our fears. Especially on the Internet, which is so
conspiracy-friendly. That was what was so interesting
about the game; you couldn't tell whether the sites you
were visiting were Majestic-created or normal Web
sites..".
Majestic creates almost 30 primary Web sites per episode.
It has dozens of "bio" sites and hundreds of Web sites
created by fans and linked to the main conspiracy threads.
The imaginary gaming firm at the core of its plots,
"Amin-X", has often been confused with the real thing. It
even won the E3 Critics Award for best original product...
Conspiracy theories have pervaded every facet of our
modern life. A.H. Barbee describes in "Making Money
the Telefunding Way" (published on the Web site of the
Institute for First Amendment Studies) how conspiracy
theorists make use of non-profit "para-churches".
They deploy television, radio, and direct mail to raise
billions of dollars from their followers through
"telefunding". Under section 170 of the IRS code, they are
tax-exempt and not obliged even to report their income.
The Federal Trade commission estimates that 10% of the
$143 billion donated to charity each year may be solicited
fraudulently.
Lawyers represent victims of the Gulf Syndrome for hefty
sums. Agencies in the USA debug bodies - they "remove"
brain "implants" clandestinely placed by the CIA during
the Cold War. They charge thousands of dollars a pop.
Cranks and whackos - many of them religious
fundamentalists - use inexpensive desktop publishing
technology to issue scaremongering newsletters
(remember Mel Gibson in the movie "Conspiracy
Theory"?).
Tabloids and talk shows - the only source of information
for nine tenths of the American population - propagate
these "news". Museums - the UFO museum in New
Mexico or the Kennedy Assassination museum in Dallas,
for instance - immortalize them. Memorabilia are sold
through auction sites and auction houses for thousands of
dollars an item.
Numerous products were adversely affected by
conspiratorial smear campaigns. In his book "How the
Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From",
Daniel Pipes describes how the sales of Tropical Fantasy
plummeted by 70% following widely circulated rumors
about the sterilizing substances it allegedly contained -
put there by the KKK. Other brands suffered a similar
fate: Kool and Uptown cigarettes, Troop Sport clothing,
Church's Fried Chicken, and Snapple soft drinks.
It all looks like one giant conspiracy to me. Now, here's
one theory worth pondering...