Malevolent global conspiracy

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 91-103

  Basham, Lee ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247457166     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9833.00167     Document Type: Review

References (10)

1. Jim Marrs' Rule by Secrecy (New York: Harper-Collins, 2000) presents an avant-garde synthesis of conspiracy theory in the grand tradition.
2. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 324 (emphasis added).
3. Brian Keeley, "Of Conspiracy Theories," Journal of Philosophy 56, no. 3 (1999), 121 (hereafter, "OCT").
4. Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 50.
5. Bok, Secrets, 47-48.
6. The attempt has been made, most famously by political sociologist C. Wright Mills in his seminal work quoted above, The Power Elite.
7. All the President's Men (2nd ed., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994) is a thorough account of the serendipity that graced both the very existence and the progress of Bernstein and Woodward's investigation of Watergate.
8. Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (New York: Bantam/Turner Books, 1992), 27. It's interesting that Quinn believes a war analogous to global Nazi domination, one to inflict civilization upon the entire world, began long ago and is now very nearly complete. He suggests that a supporting cultural-ideological conspiracy has been unleashed for many centuries on the survivors (ourselves and our ancestors) to wipe out any real memory or accurate understanding of our (good) lives in a precivilizational (a.k.a. "savage": tribal or communal) state.
9. American Psychological Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994), 634.
10. There is also the fact that many historic, well-known conspiracy theories have proved to be incredibly stupid: the Salem witch trials of 1692, for instance. Science has a similar bad rap in some circles: There has been so much that has been so wrong. Ironically enough, see Paul Boyer and Stephan Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), for a compelling Machiavellian analysis of what really appears to have been behind the Salem witch trials-a demonically conspiratorial use of demonic conspiracy theory.