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Bernays gives an insight into how the elites actually subjugate the masses through the media, and this will resonate with those theorists who contend that humans are highly programmable through radio and television. It does seem to be a battle of brainwashing to an extent, with various government controlled media outlets each sending out propaganda to its citizens. Thus American, Russian and Chinese citizens are all given different propaganda and different versions of events. Bernays states in the book that: That's the short version, but the long version turns out to be detailed, fascinating, and a far-reaching epic story that touches on political biases, the culture wars, and meditations on the nature of conspiracy and revenge. Witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts. Lithograph by George H. Walker. Undated. Photograph: Bettmann Archive Propaganda by Edward Bernays is the oldest conspiracy book on the list, originally written in 1928. The book outlines the psychology of manipulating the masses through the technique of public communication. Bernays is viewed by many media historians as the father of public relations. Noam Chomsky stated that: From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”
Anything that is happening today can be, if you so choose, understood to be part of the incredibly byzantine and hidden plan of the Illuminati that may seem confusing to us on the surface but you can trust as an article of faith that is part of their grand plan. They are both omniscient and omnipotent (unlike God they’re not benevolent) but they are working behind the scenes and that explains the world.Anna Gooding-Call is a librarian and writer originally from rural central New York. She got her BA in the city that inspired "The Twilight Zone" and confirms that the hitchhikers really are weird there. Today, she lives in Massachusetts with her wife and two cats. Terry Bollea, meanwhile, comes off as very sympathetic and vulnerable in this tale. Sure, he was rich and famous. But he was also busted up after years of pro wrestling. His marriage went to hell, his wife ran off with a younger man and took most of his assets, his son was in prison, and when he went to his best friend's house for comfort and support, his best friend's wife essentially seduced him, and unknown to Bollea, the two of them were taping every encounter. But what I found is that those in fact aren’t outliers. I began to see a pattern emerge whereby there’s almost a template for fears of secret societies, of this invisible, undetectable group that is nonetheless doing terrible things behind the scenes. I went into this book with high hopes, and I am happy to say I wasn’t disappointed. This is one of those rare books that make me want to learn more even if the idea of falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole is terrifying. You see that with 9/11 conspiracy theories and you see it with the JFK assassination. The idea that the head of state was assassinated and yet, for a large part of the population, the only explanation was that the government itself in some form or another was responsible for this is representative of that sea change.”
Most publications have been sceptical of this finding. On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison (1988), a Louisiana lawyer, and L Fletcher Prouty’s JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy (1992), featured key source material for Oliver Stone’s movie JFK(1991), which suggested that the president was executed by a vast cabal of businessmen, gangsters, politicians, soldiers, Cuban dissidents and spooks.The interviews with Johnson himself that punctuate the book are genuinely intriguing, and not just for Dorries’s ability to somehow capture him sounding more thoughtful and statesmanlike than any previous interviewer. They’re interspersed with long, dramatic conversations between Dorries and various unnamed sources who all seemingly share her thesis, several of whom have a habit of speaking like characters in a bad spy novel. The one codenamed Moneypenny, who she hints could be a spook, fascinated me. Over the years, I’ve admittedly met only a handful of MI5 or MI6 types, but none said things like “for the first time ever, there is a man waiting in the wings who is connected to the money network of the world, and of course they hate it when the plan doesn’t go to plan”. You long for a proper explanation of how Johnson managed to hire so many people who hated him, or even why they hated him so much if he really was the man Dorries describes. Instead, we get Moneypenny’s analysis that Johnson never realised what the plotters were doing because “it’s the big picture for him, always … he was obsessed about delivering on his manifesto promises”, which suggests she isn’t destined for a long intelligence career. This is an excellent book. It reminds me in some ways of one of my favorite nonfiction works, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, and not just because there is some overlap in topic. Like Cultish, Conspiracy is written with good humor and a lot of compassion towards the people who fall down the rabbit hole. It's funny and generous, freely pointing out the places where conspiracy theories have proven completely true (#freebritney, anyone?), and where people in authority have really not HELPED the anti-conspiracy-theory cause (spoiler alert: the CIA features in several of these examples). The history of conspiracy theories, it turns out, is a fascinating one, rife with prejudice (especially antisemitism, with class prejudice coming in a close second), miscommunication, and cognitive distortions. It's written with a light hand, with liberal applications of snark.
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