Conspiracy Theories, Paranoia, Rumors, and Threats to American Democracy

They say that even paranoids have enemies. And Kathryn S. Olmsted says that even conspiracy theories have roots. She traces them in Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. She recently chatted with U.S. News about what real and imagined plots illustrate about U.S. culture. Excerpts:

What's really behind this book?
I was interested in why so many Americans believe that their government is capable of carrying out these horrific crimes. So I wanted to look at the evolution of anti-government conspiracy theories from World War I, when the government began to get really big, how those anti-government theories changed over time, and what they tell us about American democracy.

Why start with World War I?
Because that's the moment when the U.S. governmentreally began to get big. It's the moment when you have the birth of the modern state, with the government being able to draft millions of people and take over factories and railroads and also to criminalize dissent with theespionage and the sedition acts. And then after the war, the surveillance of dissenters becomes institutionalized in the [Federal] Bureau of Investigation.

You reference the notion of a paranoid strain in American history, arguing that after World War I it takes on a government-centric focus.
It becomes more prevalent. There's always been conspiracy theories in American history, but before World War I they were mainly directed against religious and ethnic, racial minorities or against businessmen. They tend[ed] to be these fears that these outsiders will come in and capture the government and manipulate it to their own ends. What begins to change in World War I is that Americans don't just fear that sinister forces are going to take over the state; they see the state itself as a sinister force.

You don't try to verify the truth of the conspiracy theories. Why?
Because I'm interested in why people believe these conspiracy theories and what that tells us about Americans' attitudes towards their government. If I really wanted to get into adjudicating each one of these conspiracy theories, it would be a tremendously long book.

Were there conspiracy theories that you found particularly surprising?
As far as finding them more compelling, that would be the JFK [assassination] theory. As you really get into that, there's so many bizarre aspects to that and so many unanswered questions. The government deliberately did not pursue some of the possible paths of investigation with that because Lyndon Johnson was afraid that a real vigorous investigation would uncover the Kennedy administration's plots against Fidel Castro. And so quite deliberately, they did not follow the whole Cuba angle.

What will readers find surprising?
A lot of people are surprised at the percentage of Americans who believe 9/11 conspiracy theories. If you teach on a college campus, you're not surprised by that, because most young Americans believe 9/11 conspiracy theories. I think people who are older or who are more likely to read the mainstream media than younger people are really shocked to find out that polls show that a third of Americans think that the Bush administration was involved in 9/11.

Will that fade with time, or will they still believe that when they're older?
I don't know. That'll be interesting to see. Certainly, young people tend to go through the phase where they're very distrustful of authority. So it's kind of hip and cool to believe that their government was involved in this. But on the other hand, it could be a more lasting phenomenon because the Americans who are aged 18 to 29—[according to the polls,] a majority of them believe the 9/11 conspiracy theories—as we go forward, it's that group that grew up with the Internet [that] is more inclined to believe that the government and the media are involved in this conspiracy to create this alternative version of reality.

Is there a conspiracy theory that you wish you'd been able to cover that you didn't?
Yeah. There are so many out there that are very interesting—theories about Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the moon landing are all interesting to look at. But I tried to choose conspiracy theories that I thought were particularly representative but also looked at very significant moments in American history. A lot of them are about war decisions. I also didn't want to keep telling the same story over and over again. If I did a chapter on every single assassination, I think I would start getting quite repetitive.