A well-written book that takes a look at some of the conspiracies of how they came about and how they can affect people. I think the author was trying to show that conspiracies have been around for ages, which they have changed over the years, some have not. Some people still have issues with the Federal Reserve I don’t know if that is a conspiracy or not, just as people believe in aliens hidden below area 51. Over the course of time, these get to be believed whether it is by a former worker or government employee and then that person ends up injured and then it is on with the next phase of conspiracy. Each one has its origin and the author tries to do his best in showing how long it has been around or just how some are silly, he does not say that I do. As a child people kept saying that death camps and the holocaust did not happen and yet my father a grunt was there and say one of the camps told me about it and had no reason to lie because he was a kid from an orphanage that joined the Army. This author does a good job of breaking down the conspiracy and the reason behind them, overall a good book.

As someone who is prone to concocting conspiracy theories and spreading them, with 432 pages and a finite amount of time to review, I'm sad to say that I wasn't engaged. I really wanted to be engaged. Much of my background knowledge is in researching the illuminati and free masons. Those particular passages made sense to me.

I sincerely hope Konda writes more books - maybe on a topic other than conspiracy theories.

This is one of those cases where there's too much breadth and not enough depth. While the author's purpose is to explain long-lasting conspiracy theories, the fervor of their adherents, and their history in American politics, the book is essentially a compendium of citations. Conspiratorial writers and historical movements are introduced out of order and without context before immediately moving on to the next quote.

It's quite possible the ARC format I read it in doesn't do the book any favors. The layout was a mess and footnotes weren't enabled. But after getting lost halfway through, I went back and reread the first half of the book again with the same result. A lot of names and dates listed, but I had very little understanding of how they connected. And as is usual with non-fiction books dealing with sociology, the back half of the book detailing more recent events was noticeably glib.

Disorganized and extremely dry, this book dutifully catalogs a ton of research, but barely explains any of it. I was left with a list of terms and publications to look up on elsewhere, rather than feeling I had learned something.

(This book is discussed in more detail on our book review podcast, Midnight Skull Sessions episode 112.)

I have always been interested by conspiracies and why so many people believe in them. This is why I knew this book was gonna be right up my alley and it was. I know a few family members who would be interested in this.

Thank you, NetGalley, for a copy of this book. All reviews are my own.

Critical thinking is really a lost art. Social media takes a lot of the blame for the never-ending urban legends, conspiracy theories and other nonsense that spreads like wildfire across the internet, but the lack of critical thinking plays a significant role as role when people treat nonsense as fact without exploring the basis of the rumors. While conspiracy theories around Sandy Hook, 9/11 and other recent stories have exploded, the theories themselves are as old as history. This book explores the roots and basis of various theories throughout time and how they've evolved. Well researched, very readable.

Open any social media platform and you can slam into a conspiracy theory in a matter of clicks. These often asinine views have been stretched and further distorted in an attempt at legitimization— forum posts become memes become tweets become … well, information sharing goes on and on. However, though digital distribution is relatively new, there’s absolutely nothing new about the theories themselves, as Professor Thomas Milan Konda thoroughly explores.

The research presented is more than thorough. Konda explores the rise of the illogical, tracing conspiracy theories at least to the origins of Freemasonry, its high visibility playing into the idea of something nefarious hiding in plain sight. However, they were hardly the last group to be targeted, and Konda convincingly concludes that consparcism is really the “belief-system” of today. Look no further than false political memes regularly shared or climate change deniers masquerading as television pundits.

Konda’s prose does trend academic, but this is refreshing when paired with over-the-top noise of conspiracy theories. It’s logic and reason versus unbelievable schemes, the clinical versus the flashy. Konda keeps his points grounded, and the result is a slow yet interesting approach that doesn’t take the bait of some of the more extreme propositions.

This careful approach also allows Konda to explore some incredibly serious topics with tact. A lot of the conspiracies examined here stem from an anti-Semitic or xenophobic viewpoint. Konda squashes this hateful rhetoric quickly without giving it any legitimacy. However, he also expresses the seriousness of these ideas gaining more mainstream traction.

It’s frustrating, fascinating, and intensely informative.

In Conspiracies of Conspiracies, Thomas Konda traces America’s obsession with conspiracies from the early days of the republic till today. Though the book focuses on American people & conspiracies, I believe the theme of book is universal, especially in today’s Post-Truth Era.

Conspiracies of Conspiracies details centuries of sinister conspiracies—from antisemitism and anti-Catholicism to UFOs and reptilian humanoids. Thomas Konda has analysed several conspiracy theories, has shown their origins and how they fit into the conspiracy world. From the Invention of Conspiracy Theory to the Emergence of the Hidden Hand & New World Order to Pan-Ideological Conspiracy Theories: Denialism and Cover-Up, the book covers a range of topics. Konda explains why these theories have recently made a comeback on the political stage and dissects a media landscape that increasingly tends to detect conspiracy everywhere.

Konda attempts to explore the mindsets that lead people toward these conspiracies and how these conspiracy theories have influenced history, particularly United States history. This book also attempts to track the origins of some of the more prevalent conspiracy theories like America leaving the gold standard, Communism being a Jewish conspiracy among others, since many have common origins and mostly they overlap and contradict each other.

This book doesn't come with easy answers and you may need some background knowledge of history including the Illuminati, the Free Masons etc to truly grasp it all but it does help you understand it. Overall, it’s a well researched and well written book offering some new insights.

Many thanks to the publishers University of Chicago Press, the author Thomas Milan Konda and NetGalley for the ARC.

Two conspiracists walk into a bar …. Do you really believe that was just a coincidence???
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

In reading Conspiracies of Conspiracies, you need a laugh up front because the content of the book is so discouraging. There are thousands of conspiracies circulating, and each has its adherents. The United States is positively awash with crackpot theories, and thanks to social media, their proponents are out there pounding the cyber streets for more believers. It has become a part of daily life. The president has made them legitimate.

Author Thomas Konda has assembled hundreds of pages of conspiracists and their theories, shown where their ideas came from and how they fit into the conspiracy world. It’s intimidating just to think how he divided and analyzed the mountain of nonsense that has been growing in number, importance, and legitimacy since the founding of the country. Konda is engaging and thorough, as well as worrisome and depressing.

There are basically two kinds of conspiracy theory. One is based on White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) under attack for their very lives, and one where theorists deny anything, from their own lying eyes to theoretical science. Both kinds can be linked to violence and both require absolute faith.

William Potter Gale was emblematic of the first kind. He claimed that communism was Satan’s form of government, and that it was being imposed on Israel as their government. Worse, that communists believe that the created are above the creator, and that those who believe the US federal government is above the states that created it have accepted Satan’s communistic philosophy. And therefore, Jews must be stopped.

A lot of WASP fear has to do with the Aryan race, which does not and has never existed. Aryan, Konda points out, is a fictitious term made up by 19th century linguists, who needed to invent a people that spoke the theoretical Aryan language – the precursor of western romance languages. It was just a construct, a placeholder. Nonetheless, it was quickly turned into a race of pure white Christian people, so far superior to anyone else that everyone should aspire to it today. And protect and defend it, with guns as necessary.

Americans saw conspiracies when the country left the silver standard and moved to gold. They claimed it played right into the hands of international (Jewish) bankers, who would then own the country. Later, when America left the gold standard, the blame went to the Federal Reserve, which appeared in 1913, and which was/is run by those same bankers for their own profit. There are numerous conspiracies surrounding the Fed and how it will leave Americans with worthless fiat dollars.

And the Illuminati, the Masons, Jews, blacks, immigrants in general, Catholics, one-world, the UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Deep State and the Hidden Hand. Conspiracists can be against democracy itself on the basis that it is run by Jews, compared to say Stalin, who was straightforward, above board, and busy wiping them out (despite being married to one). Meanwhile, Karl Marx was accused of being run by the Illuminati. The inconsistencies are staggering, and matter not at all to the conspiracists.

One of the many successful tools to promulgate conspiracies is simple age. Citing older, long forgotten conspiracy tracts gives current theories credibility. Konda cites Glenn Beck as one who got great mileage out of reviving old conspiracy theories from the 30s to the 60s.

This works for a number of very good reasons. The original author is no longer around to dispute the new slant. The original documents s/he employed have long disappeared, so no verification is possible (if it ever was). And there is no one to vouch for or against the veracity of the theory as newly reminted. So Glenn Beck (et al.) must therefore be right. Neat.

Having read these 300+ pages of attacks, vituperations and outlandish paranoia, I can point to several commonalities underlying most of the first type of conspiracy theory:
-The attacks are always against the Right
-Time is always running out
-The attackers are always non WASPs
-The attacks nibble away at White Supremacy

It seems that American White Anglo Saxon Protestants are naïve, gullible, susceptible, brainwashable weak fools who need constant protection from the entire rest of the world, which is always on the cusp of enslaving them, without their knowledge. Conspiracists are forever yelling at them to wake up before it’s too late, and to defend their God-given advantages with their lives.

With advances in culture – film, tv, cable – conspiracies branched out into simple denialism. Denialism reaches far back – the Holocaust, creationists, flat earthers – but modern denialists focus on current events. Think, 9/11, JFK, and even FDR, who was killed because he wasn’t moving fast enough for his communist handlers. They say.

Or try this one from one of the most prominent conspiracists of the 20th century, Agnes Waters. In the 1930s, she said: “There are 200,000 communist Jews at the Mexican border, waiting to get into this country. If they are admitted , they will rape every woman and child left unprotected.”

As insane as it all appears, there is more – attacks on science itself. Conspiracists are against not just MMR vaccines, but some are actually still against being inoculated against polio. Climate change is a “dingbat hoax so broadly implanted even the pope talks about it” as if it were real.

AIDS, the moon landing – anything science comes up with is subject to denial by conspiracists. There are even conspiracists who deny Einstein’s theory of relativity. The saving grace of the denials is that they are not (necessarily) Jewish, communist or black. This, in conspiracy terms, is progress.

And yet, through all the conspiracies to take over the world by religion, pseudo-science, spiritualism, political cabals, deep states and sheer force, the world trundles on as usual.

If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny.

David Wineberg

A very interesting book.
It's well researched, engaging and well written.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC

Very good information about the history of conspiracies. The author starts at the beginning with a strong history lesson and brings it to the present.