A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (repost)
Michael Barkun, "A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America"
Un-ty of C.lifornia Press | 2006 | ISBN: 0520248120 | 251 pages | PDF | 1,4 MB
Un-ty of C.lifornia Press | 2006 | ISBN: 0520248120 | 251 pages | PDF | 1,4 MB
What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date.