Conspiracy Theory: The Story of an Idea

by Ian Dunt, Dorian Lynskey

Definitive guides to the most misunderstood ideas in modern politics.

The words we use shape the world we live in - so it matters when we get them wrong. This series, from the creators of the chart-topping Origin Story podcast, sheds much-needed light on the true meanings and surprising stories behind some of our most used and abused political terms.

Where did these terms originate? Who coined them - and why? How have their meanings evolved over time? And what do they mean to people today? These small guides to (very) big ideas are an antidote to confusion and conspiracy, bringing clarity back to the conversations we have about politics.

Conspiracy Theory explores society's evolving relationship to mistruths and manipulation, and what we mean when we use this term today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Psychology, Audiobook

192 pages, Paperback

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An admirably concise history of conspiracy theories from the Middle Ages to the present day, Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey’s latest book in their Origin Story series (other titles so far: Centrism and Fascism) provides an ideal introduction for the general reader to a complex and contested subject. This is the sort of book that was once common - Penguin’s groundbreaking Pelicans series in the Sixties and Seventies led the way - but is now harder to find, which is a shame when the need is perhaps greater than ever. Dunt and Lynskey do an admirable job of tracing the origins and histories of different types of conspiracy theories (systemic and event-based) and use particularly pernicious examples to illustrate how they spread and mutate. The chapter on the psychology of conspiracy theories does a particularly good job of explaining complex concepts in a clear and straightforward way.

[Ceri Westcott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this. After dating a full blown COVID conspiracist, I became a lot more aware of how disinformation can affect a person, those around them and how they eventually get so far down the rabbit hole that it's impossible to see the light back at the top. Now I somewhat feel sorry for them instead of completely demonizing them as but jobs.

The book covers may aspects, the origins, the mainstreaming of conspiracies, how it's turned into an industry to sow distrust everywhere, the psychology and how to combat it. Really impressed by how in-depth and well researched this was. Will definitely check out the Facism book and the podcast.


Just a side note, says the book is 200 pages long but the last 50 pages are bibliography and references.

[Kieran Walford · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable extension of my favourite podcast (everyone go listen to Original Story!)

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was really impressed with this book. Maybe a bit too shaded by current American conspiracies but still enough there of historical conspiracy thinking and the psychological biases behind it to make it well worthwhile reading. I learned a lot. Dunt makes the point that we are all susceptible to forms of conspiracy thinking. It's hard wired into our brains to seek out patterns. And Conspiracy advocates tend to be very good at finding patterns where just random shit happening would be a more accurate description. I liked his section on the psychological explanations for conspiracy thinking but thought his short chapter on fighting conspiracy thinking was a rather weak and limited. I was not convinced. I have a regular lunch with a bunch of very well educated, and much travelled people who are very open to conspiracy thinking. And even when confronted with facts and the contradictions implicit in their story and acknowledging the story is wrong they are reluctant to let go of the germ of conspiracy behind it. I find this fascinating......but clearly it is very difficult to shake a good conspiracy story. I've extracted a few gems that stood out in the text for me below.
Conspiracy theories are stories about power - who has it, how they use it, what they want. They are an alternative explanation of politics, but one that is emotional rather than factual. Many conspiracy theories are so full of holes and hard to follow that even the people who believe them often cannot elucidate how they work. Their political purpose is therefore not really explaining what happened but identifying scapegoats. This is why today they are inseparable from populism and extremism. Wherever they arise, conspiracy theories see the world in terms of Us versus Them, the in-group versus the out-group, the people versus the elite, the native versus the immigrant. It is a form of storytelling that aims to identify and demonise the enemy.
It is a profoundly seductive storyline to involve yourself in: there is a vast plot that has fooled most of the world but you are the plucky detective with the wit and courage to uncover it. Conspiracy theories therefore provide all sorts of attractive propositions to the believer: a sense of order, a community of like-minded fellow truth-seekers and a starring role in events.
The essence of every conspiracy theory is 'Them'. Who "They' are changes frequently - Illuminati, Freemasons, Jews, communists, the CIA, the United Nations and so on - but the fundamental structure of thinking does not. 'They' always have certain qualities. They are unfathomably evil, extremely clever, weirdly glamorous and hypercompetent. They meet in secret, and they are responsible for everything you don't like. The Antichrist and his minions were the original 'Them' These days, the villain in every conspiracy theory is a pale imitation of Satan....... Conspiracy theories are grounded in a battle between darkness and light, in which conciliation is tantamount to surrender. 'Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil,' 'the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to the finish.
If the conspiracy theory as we know it began anywhere, it was in Bavaria on 1 May 1776, with a 28-year-old law professor called Adam Weishaupt. Weishaupt believed that the Jesuit authorities were suppressing knowledge and stifling humanity's potential.....He decided to form a group of outstanding individuals dedicated to promoting freedom, equality and rationalism. The group was called the Illuminati, which to him represented enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice. dreamt of a meritocratic brotherhood of rationality that transcended the divisions of class, religion and national borders.
He could never have guessed that he had chosen a name that would inspire political nightmares for centuries to come....... The Illuminati became a kind of cult, which separated its members from friends and family in the name of total obedience. After a while, some Illuminati infiltrated a much older secret society and recruited many of its members to the cause. That group was the Freemasons - another source of perennial suspicion and crazed fantasies....... To enhance their own mystique, the Freemasons cooked up a dubious history in which they were the custodians of ancient secrets. They had no idea that this fanciful genealogy would one day be used against them........ It was the Catholics' turn next. A Jesuit, Augustin Barruel, had popularised fear of the Illuminati; now the Jesuits themselves were the alleged plotters.
Historians disagree about whether the Protocols of Zion was ultimately assembled in Paris on the orders of the Russian secret police, or in Russia itself by freelance cranks, but it was undoubtedly an antisemitic hoax built on plagiarism.
.... Gerald Winrod, a Baptist preacher and Nazi sympathiser, imported Webster's Illuminati obsession to the US with his 1935 pamphlet Adam Weishaupt: A Human Devil, which concluded: 'The real conspirators behind the Illuminati were Jews.' The dots had been well and truly joined........ The more groups that were merged into the one-big-plot theory, the more absurd it should have seemed - how could so many people around the world keep the secret? But instead the combination expanded its audience......... For anti-semites, it did not matter if the text itself was a forgery. I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of the Protocols, the leading Nazi Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1924.
Just as followers of the sixteenth-century astrologer Nostradamus endlessly reframed his prophecies in topical ways, new editions of the Protocols folded the latest dire developments, from the Great Depression to 9/11, into the Elders' plot...... In a 1938 book about the Protocols, the historian John Gwyer astutely observed that it was not just about antisemitism but an example of a way of thinking that he called 'the Hidden Hand'. He identified 'that unfortunate crew who can see a plot in anything....... But the paranoid style, Gwyer noted, is weirdly consoling: 'It saves so much thinking to think like this, to survey the world and know that all its disorders are due to the malignity of a single group of mysterious plotters. Only remove the plotters and all will be well........ All systemic conspiracy theories are global, moving towards a one-world government. Ever since the Knights Templar, 'globalist' organisations or groups have been objects of paranoia. The international nature of Judaism, Catholicism, Freemasonry, communism and banking disturbed nativists, who saw them as networks of foreign influence with no loyalty to any nation
Watergate was not a conspiracy theory. It was, undeniably, a conspiracy. Watergate proved that cover-ups are actually very difficult to pull off: people talk, evidence emerges, plotters fall out. But the US public's faith in politicians never recovered. ....... In their ceaseless hunt for communist conspiracies, Western intelligence agencies conspired against their own citizens. In December 1974, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh exposed an illegal CIA operation to spy on the anti-war movement. 'Overnight, CIA became a sinister shadow organisation in the minds of the American people........ Then, in 1975, the Senate's Church Committee revealed several more covert government programmes: COINTEL-PRO, which infiltrated civil rights organisations such as the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement; MKUltra, which drugged US citizens in mind-control experiments; and Family Jewels, a CIA project to assassinate foreign leaders....... After so many real conspiracies had been exposed, it seemed naive to believe that Kennedy's assassination wasn't another one. In 1976, the proportion of Americans who believed in a plot peaked at a staggering 81 per cent. It did not drop significantly until 2003
The unveiling of real conspiracies shows how limited, discoverable and often incompetent they are compared to the giant plots outlined in conspiracy theories.
The New World Order developed a complex mythology involving some combination of the following: a United Nations-led military invasion of the USA, black helicopters, the confiscation of firearms, microchip-enabled mind control, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) concentration camps for 'patriots' and a network of secret societies orchestrating all of the above via traitors in the US government....... During the 198os, previously separate subcultures – ufo-ology, far-right militias, the New Age community - converged around this spectre of the New World Order. Milton William Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse pulled together the New World Order, the Book of Revelation, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Jesuits, the Nazis, the Rothschilds, the Bilderberg group, the Trilateral Commission, the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, Alternative 3, the Kennedy assassination and AIDS into the superconspiracy theory of a plot by malevolent extraterrestrials.
After the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, it soon emerged that there was no sign whatsoever of WMDs........The case for war had been built on at best a delusion and at worst an outright lie......The Iraq War proved that governments of major powers can be susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Countless people have undergone a process of radicalisation similar to that experienced by Musk, Oliver, Nawaz and Wolf. They start with one theory and then tumble down the rabbit hole, until they are so deep that there is no limit to what they might believe.
Once they have secured [a support base of donors] support base, conspiracy entrepreneurs often fall prey to something called 'audience capture'. They have to keep feeding the beast with a constant supply of new material, so they cannot afford to be fussy. They accumulate conspiracy theories at a dizzying rate, rarely daring to risk alienating followers by dismissing one as too far-fetched or politically toxic. The conspiracy economy thus incentivises escalation.
Presidents from George Washington to Richard Nixon have swallowed conspiracy theories at various points, but none consumed them as gluttonously as Donald Trump. In fact, the celebrity tycoon launched his political career with the “birther innuendo relating to Obama.
QAnon became a grand collaborative fiction about not just the deep state but a vast satanic cabal of pedophiles that included household names - a lurid new mutation of the New World Order. Most conspiracy theories identify villains, but QAnon also had heroes - led by the Messiah-like Donald Trump - and the promise of imminent violent retribution...... Anon was built on nothing. In a way, even calling QAnon a conspiracy theory would be a compliment. It is not a pseudo-explanation for why there is an elite global network of child sex traffickers, because there isn't one to explain. Anon is more like an apocalyptic cult, in which the act of belief is more important than the details of what is being believed
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
In 2024, conspiracy theories are both more dangerous than ever and weirdly boring. Whereas they used to require some effort to piece together, they now flow from a knee-jerk denial of reality. A false flag, for example, is no longer an extreme claim but, for many people, the obvious, off-the-shelf explanation for any atrocity....... As Steve Brotherton wrote in Suspicious Minds: Conspiracy thinking is ubiquitous, because it's a product, in part, of how all of our minds are working all the time.'
In particular, conspiracy theories play off three distinct cognitive biases: pattern perception, agency detection and proportionality bias.
Humans want to join the dots. Our minds are conditioned to find patterns in the world. And that is not a fault - it is an advantage. It is what allowed our ancestors to understand that bears were predators. The downside is that we are terrible at recognising randomness
[Researchers in Holland found that] those participants who were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories were substantially more likely to find patterns in both the coin tosses and the abstract expressionist paintings......... why was Oswald himself shot by Jack Ruby while in police custody? All we can really say is: shit happens. People do crazy things and there are limits to our ability to make sense of their actions. In these cases, there is no deeper meaning to be found and there are no all-powerful hidden conspirators pulling the strings.' For a person who is extremely susceptible to illusory pattern perception, this conclusion will be intolerable..... Instead, links must be found, connections established and dots joined.
The first person to use the phrase conspiracy theory in the modern sense was Karl Popper, in 1952. Popper described what he called 'the "conspiracy theory of society".......... Very often, things happen that nobody desired. As Popper put it, conspiracy theorists 'assume that we can explain practically everything in society by asking who wanted it, whereas the real task of the social sciences is to explain those things which nobody wants - such as, for example, a war, or a depression'.
individuals will produce a pattern from noise to return the world to a predictable state. As we feel that we lose control over our surroundings, our mind works to re-establish it by projecting order onto the chaos......All of us have these mental attributes, but some of us exhibit them more intensely than others. In particular, religious faith shares many of the same qualities as conspiracy theory. It is an attempt to create patterns out of seemingly disparate events, like floods, earthquakes and plagues. It posits that there is agency behind all these incidents, in the form of a creator. Even the most rational and analytical people have a weakness for occasionally thinking that 'everything happens for a reason'.
Marcel Proust, observed in 1913 that this resistance to challenging facts was psychologically fundamental: 'The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them; they can inflict on them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them.'......Similar mental architecture can be found in the world of mysticism and counter-knowledge, from tarot cards, telepathy and spirit mediums to homeopathy, reiki and astrology.......Research has shown that a higher propensity to see agency where there is no empirical evidence is a strong predictor for both supernatural and conspiracist beliefs.
In 1994, a genocide took place in Rwanda. Over the course of a few weeks, militant Hutus murdered up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. And yet there are no Western conspiracy theories about the Rwanda genocide. Why?...... Rwanda (them) was irrelevant to most people's identity in the West (us), so the genocide did not inspire a group reaction and the paranoia that comes with it........ Two key qualities help explain when that normal sense of group identity will become dangerous.....The first is its intensity. The more aggressively we associate with our group, the more likely we are to be unaccepting of other groups.
The second quality is a perception of threat, real or imagined, from the out group.
Conspiracist thinking is rooted in normal psychological processes. It can therefore become absorbed into any political agenda in order to confirm pre-existing beliefs.
The most dangerous slippage towards conspiracy theory is on the mainstream right.... The paranoid right casts the entire project of progressive politics as a systemic conspiracy and reframes organic change as planned subversion.
How to Fight Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theories are dangerous. In their most extreme form, they have been used to justify tyranny and genocide. They inspire mass shootings, terrorist attacks and insurrections. They encourage the harassment of reporters, healthcare workers and the victims of atrocities.
Only serious social and professional consequences can act as a deterrent. If someone insists on using conspiracist language, they should no longer be invited to speak at respectable think-tanks, give their opinion on unrelated matters on mainstream current affairs programmes or enjoy an easy ride on podcasts. In short, they should not enjoy the advantages of being treated as serious people...... Social media companies need to be quicker to suspend bad actors, moderate misleading content and tweak algorithms to restrict the spread of disinformation...... We must equip children with the ability to navigate it throughout their lives. Starting in primary school, they should be taught how to critically assess information in the online world....... The antidote to the paranoid style is the acceptance of accidents, coincidences and loose ends. History is not a coherent plot but a frantic improvisation. That is not such an enticing story, but it does have the advantage of being true....... Conspiracy theories feed on powerful emotions and psychological biases, so you can't dismantle them with facts alone. They are compelling stories and they have to be fought with better stories.
Certain attributes will help insulate us against it: a genuinely sceptical disposition, a commitment to reason and empiricism, an understanding of how conspiracy theories work and an aversion to political extremism. But none of us are immune...... Conspiracy theories thrive on our desire for simple stories about the world, stories that reject its complexity and randomness and instead emphasise a false sense of agency. They play on our paranoia by demanding that we stop thinking of opponents as people with different values and instead consider them an absolute evil that must be overthrown. We all have that hair-trigger itch towards simplicity and tribalism....... We must recognise that there are no easy answers.
We must see that our opponents are not malevolent geniuses but people much like ourselves, with different principles and agendas. It is a thankless task, and a difficult one. But it is how we will save reason, progress and reality itself from the rabbit hole.
What was my overall take on the book? I liked it. Learned a lot and even if I have a few quibbles about his suggested ways of combating conspiracists, happy to give it five stars.

[Nora|KnyguDama · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

[Philtatos · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you know general history, none of this book is particularly ‘original’ - it’s more a primer of the history of conspiracy theories. It is also heavily Anglo-American-centric: it adds nothing about what conspiracy theorists come out with in Russia, South America, China, India, Africa, etc.

I dislike the book (page 66) for its portrayal of the black community as ‘incubators’ of conspiracy theories. I was offended reading this section (I am not black).

Honestly, the whole section could have been better worded- frankly, it is demeaning and racist to caricature and denigrate a whole group of people as ‘America’s largest incubator of conspiracy theories’. They offer NO credible evidence or facts to support this claim, just some random quotes by a few black people. I am genuinely shocked the publishers thought such a sensationalist claim would be okay to publish.

Even the Pew Research Center has revised a report after it received criticism for saying a majority of Black Americans believe “racial conspiracy theories” about U.S. institutions.

Frankly, it stinks of them saying black people aren’t ’educated’ enough to get facts right about the world.

How dare the writers think that black people in America don’t have the right to be suspicious of a government’s actions and activities which have CONSISTENTLY worked against the black community. That isn’t ’conspiracy’ - that’s healthy ’skepticism’ and they have EVERY right to be skeptical: from slavery, civil rights, the murders of their civil rights leaders, racism that still exists to this day and the BLM response and counter-response, Tuskegee, and complicity in undermining and underfunding help for the crack-cocaine and AIDS epidemic.

They dared not write about the gay community being under the illusion of conspiracy theories when AZT came out. Did the gay community trust what was being said about AZT for the same reason as black people: owing to past persecutions?

I don’t often find black people being the ‘largest incubators’ of conspiracy theories on podcasts and tweets nowadays.

The writers failed to write responsibly.

Instead, the feeling I was left with is that nations like America are fuelled by their own government’s paranoia of other shadowy people’s conspiracies (eg. The commies taking over America) that they end up actually committing offences that lead to a breach in public trust in the very democratic institutions that the authors are attempting to defend.

I’m not sure why people highly rate this book. Its bibliography section could have been linked with the actual text it purports to support. Instead, we are left to imagine which sources support which statements. For such a serious subject matter it would have been helpful to leave no doubt about their supporting source with statements like black people being ‘America’s largest incubator of conspiracy theories’ outside of the political divide.

The authorship make their own biases apparent by bizarrely writing a sentence on Noam Chomsky. You are left to ‘allude’ that they have an issue with Chomsky’s work as falling into the category of ‘conspiracy’. Again, they show no actual argument as to why. There are plenty of bizarre passing sentences that appear benign at cursory reading, but show the bias in authorship hidden.

Another bizarre example of their poor writing and bias comes in the sentence about ‘anti-Zionist’. I find it difficult to believe the writers didn’t consciously put quotations marks around the term, as though again alluding to these so called ‘anti-Zionists’ (who are never mentioned so we can assess ourselves) as just pretending to use the term for their hidden antisemitism. Instead, their clumsy writing style reads as though they have a genuine issue with all anti-Zionists (which might explain why Chomsky is mentioned?) - which, in a book about ‘conspiracy’ is quite problematic. Again, there are BETTER ways to write of what they were (possibly?) trying to allude to.

If you want to read something that factually tackles conspiracy theories and what we can actually do about them with the wave of populist thought I’d recommend something like ‘We need new stories’ by Nesrine Malik - at least she makes it clear what position she stands for without pretending to be a non-biased account.

[John Ennew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great accompaniment to their origin story podcast. This book gives the origins of the conspiracy theory and why we are susceptible to them. Thoroughly enjoyed the style.

[Jeremy Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was (and remain) unfamiliar with the "Story of an Idea" podcast, but I enjoyed this quick read outlining the 'story' of the conspiracy theory.

Given that I love reading about conspiracy theories (check out some of my Jon Ronson reviews) and have a background in psychology and history, I have followed this phenomenon since I was a young man.

Ian Dunt and co-author Dorian Linskey hit all the right beats early as they tour their reader from Christian times, through various strains of antisemitism, witch-hunts and early fraternal organizations like the Illuminati.

The hideous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" text garners some detail, and the authors adroitly note its influence on Hitler and the Nazis along with more modern bad-faith actors.

Our authors touch on the universal human appeal of 'theories of everything' and they use this to explain a litany of moments and eras of madness from the 20th century, including Joseph McCarthy and the 'red scare', the JFK assassination, the AIDS epidemic, the Clintons, US militia movements, and 9/11 before we get to our modern era and "The Conspiracy Industry".

Alex Jones, COVID and governmental responses, 5G tech, President Trump's "deep state" and QAnon all come under scrutiny, and the destructive impact of conspiracy thinking, America's "paranoid style" is perhaps most relatable in these later chapters.

Chapter six, "The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories" is obviously far too short to do justice to the topic, but our authors have, at least, a functional knowledge of the discipline and touch on some interesting examples.

Popular culture comes under some scrutiny as well, with our authors noting the cynical, suspicious nature of televsion programs like "The X-Files" films like Oliver Stone's "JFK" and some hip-hop music.

Dunt and Linskey try to play non-partisan cards, but the most obvious failings of their book lie in analysis of modern 'conservative' views that fall outside of their version of classical liberal leftism. Sorry guys. While 'cultural Marxism' may be a term most associated with some gross actors on the right, it is no 'fiction'. Advocates FOR this mode of thinking exist on the left and have used this language themselves.

Immediately bringing up far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik is disingenuous 'guilt by association', and if anything, our authors seem guilty of their own conspiratorial thinking when it comes to the "Intellectual Dark Web". I respect the academic credibility of Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss, Sam Harris and Claire Lehmann - four of the more respectable names on their list - more than just about any podcaster out there, much less these two.

And certainly, a truly fair analysis of conspiracy theories would consider a totalizing, all-explanatory concept like 'white supremacy' as a candidate.

'Solutions' on offer here fail to amount to much - 'media literacy' is going to solve our problems? We've been teaching 'media literacy' for decades, guys, and young libs such as yourselves can't even see your own biases.

As far as 'theories of everything' go, mine, of governmental capitulation to neo-liberal technocracy, has more explanatory value than does y0urs (right wing bad).

A small, short book (156 pages of engaging, accessible reading), the size precludes in-depth explorations of the subject matter. For this reader, that meant an engaging review, but not much new content.

Readers with less familiarity of the subject matter may find the length, brevity and broad scope ideal.

Readers unable to square the circle of conspiratorial liberal thought in a text denouncing conspiratorial thought should give this a pass, although it is only at the end of the book that this tendency rears its ugly head.

For me, social science research has value in its ability to predict our immediate future and analyze our present. For Dunt and Lynskey to make no connections between wokeness, the war in Gaza and conspiratorial thinking is proof of their bias and limitations, but I do not see them as acting in bad faith. A lot of people are blind to the failings of their own political tribe. (Which, as an aside, is why I have personally renounced political tribes).

I still enjoyed this little book, and read it in one go. But I will give the podcast a pass.

[Mitch Olson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping by reading this book that I could develop my understanding of what creates the conditions in people’s psychology that results in them becoming active conspiracy theorists. But it is pretty shallow and lightweight in that respect. Amazes me that people can devote so much energy to a subject and not spend more time working to deconstruct and understand the phenomenon.

I came away with my own impromptu “theory” which I constructed whilst listening to the last 10 minutes of the book.

- I believe it's more helpful to focus on the Conspiracy theorists (holders and propagators of conspiracy theories) vs the conspiracy theories themselves
- Not polar phenomenon but a spectrum

## Factors on the spectrum
- strength of belief
- active propagating of belief
- Low "native" authority (low ability in self-asserted critical thinking)
- Sense of victimhood
- Identity with fellow believers
- Hold multiple conspiracy theories of the group

These factors contribute towards defining what makes an active conspiracy theorist.

But it’s the boundaries that are the interesting place. Where people get pushed over from passive and low energy engagement with an idea to a more active participation. Unless we start to understand this then we can’t work to help people find a more sober relationship with understanding reality.

The other issue that wasn’t even touched on in the book is the potential that any one conspiracy theory holds any legitimacy. Of course some of the theories will. This book is just dumb. Don’t bother reading.

[Arun Divakar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short primer on the whole aspect of Conspiracy Theories : what they are, how they impact us, how they manipulate us and why they have gained so much traction in the present-day world. The book traces the beginning of this phenomenon from the world of the Bible and then slowly builds a road to where we are today. A sort of structure is laid out to explain why people resort to such theories and why most of the people across the world are mistrustful of their governments and/or authority figures. If you are someone who has followed international news for a while now, a lot of what is here would be stuff you can recollect.

My biggest gripe with this book is how singularly American centric the whole narrative is. Extensive chapters are devoted to the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam war, the aftermath of 9/11 etc. It is as if the rest of the world does not exist.

Interesting if you want a quick overview of what the noise is all about at a very high level.

[Aran Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book in a series of 3 that I've read
I love the matter of fact explanations but also the ideas on how to tackle the spread of disinformation
Unfortunately, with the rise of the internet and how easy it is to spread false information, I've seen more and more friends distance themselves from reality and place their faith in false gods like Trump and Musk
It's important to keep the conversation going, without ridicule to ensure that every opportunity is given for people to hear reasonable explanations for events
There is truth in some theories, but also, the world does operate at random. Sometimes, people do things because they're mentally ill or have just developed a warped view on something
Can't wait to read the last book in the series, great work

[Gintaute Riabovaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skaičiau lietuvių kalba, tik goodreads sistemoje nerasta. Knyga vertinga pirminiam susipažinimui su sąmokslo teorijomis, jų kilme, principais ir tai, kokiems tikslams tarnaujančios. Tačiau įdomiausi buvo paskutiniai du skyriai, kuriems norėčiau ateityje pasigilinti skirti daugiau dėmesio. Tai apie sąmokslo teorijų psichologija bei kokiais būdais reikėtų su jomis kovoti. Knyga ypač aktuali šiandien, kai toks ryškus populizmas vidaus politikoje, telkiamasi manipuliacijas, sąmokslo teorijas, taip siekiant didinti chaosą ir surinkti kuo didesnes mases.

[Tamara Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the absolute best book I have read about conspiracy theories that encompasses their history, their classification, how they work, how people become susceptible to them, and how to combat them. The authors are skilled writers, and the book flows easily from one topic into the next. This book was both informative and enjoyable! If I taught media studies or critical thinking classes, this book would be required reading.

[Cadence Woodland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing is new. This is an excellent and accessible history lesson of the last three centuries and how the last twenty years or so of American/Western politics getting are just the latest in a long, long line of the same story.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book uses an example of when you hear a rhythmic sound at night it makes sense to assume it's footsteps because sometimes it pays off to be paranoid. Yes.

Reads as if it was written by two redditors. Which it was.

[Simon Linacre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, great topic, great podcast. Loved it

[Miles Hamer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensively researched and hysteria-free persuasive polemic. At times upsetting, and often infuriating, but always essential.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5*

[Ruth Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read and helpful to understanding why conspiracy theories are so common at this time.

[Andrew Ingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but important book into the history and structure of conspiracy theories - read as Trump became president again so seemed all the more relevant

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was easy to read and really interesting. It gave a brief insight into conspiracy theories, what they are and how they happen.

[Antonia Antrobus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not an enjoyable read in my opinion… I didn’t like how it assumed how some of these conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories 👐🏽👐🏽👐🏽 e.g. the death of JFK and Dianna IS suss