Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism by James Piereson

Author:James Piereson [Piereson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History, Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781594037542
Google: vS8uAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 19094631
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 2007-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Conspiracies have existed throughout history, as Hofstadter emphasized, but systematic political doctrines incorporating conspiracies are modern phenomena associated with the rise of secular politics. Daniel Pipes coined the term “conspiracism” to describe an outlook that sees conspiracies operating everywhere as the moving forces behind great events.4 Hofstadter formulated the concept of the “paranoid style” to describe the same phenomenon. Both terms suggest a mental outlook that is partial to “the plot theory of history.” Such an outlook typically begins with a belief in conspiracy and then searches out the facts that tend to confirm it. Conspiracy theories are attractive to some because they identify ultimate causes for important events, thereby denying that such events might be caused by chance or coincidence. Conspiratorial doctrines also carry with them an aspect of secret knowledge that is denied to those of conventional beliefs. Such doctrines seem most alluring when they point to some fundamental betrayal on the part of those in positions of trust and authority. A plot set in motion by an enemy seems nowhere near as interesting as one concocted by an ostensible ally or friend. An undertone of betrayal or broken trust frequently gives emotional power to charges of conspiracy. Liberals of the postwar era were correct to associate the paranoid style with ideological or sectarian politics and to highlight its incompatibility with the open-minded and skeptical spirit of modern liberalism. Yet they may have been too hopeful in their assumption that liberals, because of their commitment to rationality, are immune to conspiratorial fantasies. The fascinations of conspiracy theory attract adherents all the way across the political spectrum.

Both Hofstadter and Pipes traced the modern origins of conspiracism to the aftermath of the French Revolution, when conservatives blamed secret societies—the Illuminati and Freemasons—for the unprecedented attack on the institutions of civilization.5 According to these influential theories, the secret societies did not simply play a role in supporting the revolution or in expressing some of its central ideals, but actually directed and plotted the course of the whole event. More worrisome still, the Masons and the Illuminati (according to the charges) continued to be active in the political affairs of France and other countries, undermining established political and religious institutions through their clandestine influence. John Robison, a Scottish author, first advanced this case in 1797 in a volume with the suggestive title Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried On in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. Around the same time, Augustus Barruel, a Jesuit priest who fled from France to England, published his own history of the revolution in which he indicted the Illuminati and the Masons for the parts they played in bringing about the upheaval: “Everything in the French Revolution, even the most dreadful of crimes, was foreseen, contemplated, contrived, resolved upon, decreed; everything was the consequence of the most profound villainy, and was prepared and produced by those men who alone held the leading threads of conspiracies long before woven

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