Conspiracy theories are not new in the United States, but over the years they have taken on a life and power of their own. How did conspiracy theories become so entrenched in the American mind? Why is it that, even if we don't entirely believe them, we like them?
Our guests today are Katherine Olmsted, author of Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI and history professor at UC Davis and Derek Arnold, an instructor at Villanova University who teaches communications and conspiracy theory.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:01] I remember years ago, walking down the street in New York with a friend of mine and talking about some seriously appalling nonsense that had [00:00:10] just gone down at the federal level. And this friend also happens to be British, and we are ranting and bemoaning, and she goes, why isn't your secret shadow government doing [00:00:20] anything about this?
Nick Capodice: [00:00:22] Yeah, get it together. Secret shadow government.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:24] I am pretty sure that is exactly what I said. Quit sitting on your hands and your cushy [00:00:30] bunker. Climb up here and do something about this. And of course, my friend was joking. And I was also joking, but I think we [00:00:40] were a little bit not joking.
Archival: [00:00:45] They really did fake the moon landing. How sad is that?
Archival: [00:00:49] Jack [00:00:50] Kennedy and and Bobby Kennedy assassinated. Martin Luther King assassinated. I firmly convinced that it was it was not a lone killer. 80% [00:01:00] of the American people say they don't believe the government. Now that's that's really healthy.
Archival: [00:01:05] False flag operations, if you go through history, happen all the time before these wars. [00:01:10]
Archival: [00:01:10] But that's very different from saying that the government knew 9/11 was coming, knew the planes were coming and didn't try to stop it.
Archival: [00:01:16] Well, take a look at my book. It's no more...
Archival: [00:01:19] These fake [00:01:20] ballots that are coming in late. And back to the observation. They're not letting us watch the process.
Archival: [00:01:25] Pam, did you just say fake ballots?
Archival: [00:01:27] It comes from the Illuminati. No matter how they sound, [00:01:30] Illuminati is real.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:36] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:38] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:39] And today [00:01:40] the secret shadow government aka conspiracy theories, aka what are they and why do so many of us Americans have picture collages covered in webs of red string [00:01:50] in our minds? In [00:02:10] 2023, the market research firm YouGov did a survey of 1000 American adults across [00:02:20] the age, gender, race, education and political spectrum and asked them whether they thought the following statements were true or not true. [00:02:30] Do you want to hear some, Nick?
Nick Capodice: [00:02:32] Absolutely. Let's do it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:34] Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating John F Kennedy in 1963. [00:02:40]
Nick Capodice: [00:02:41] Now, am I assessing these statements, Hanna.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:44] I think that we should leave that for your personal private life. Okay. Here's another one. Regardless [00:02:50] of who is officially in charge of the government and other organizations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together. [00:03:00]
Nick Capodice: [00:03:00] The secret shadow government.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:01] Here's another one. Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:06] Oh, I had actually forgotten about that one.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:08] Another. The US government [00:03:10] was behind the nine over 11 attacks on New York City. The 1969 landing on the moon did not occur and was actually staged somewhere in Arizona. The US government is [00:03:20] using the Covid 19 vaccine to microchip the population. The list goes on.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:25] So what is the verdict? Do people believe these are true statements?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:29] Well, more [00:03:30] than half of the people surveyed do think that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. That was the most popular theory. The second most popular was that a single group of people [00:03:40] are ruling the world. Again, secret shadow government. The fake moon landing was at the bottom of the list. And the common thread in all of these, what [00:03:50] must be true in order for all of these statements to be true, is that we are being lied to.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:56] We the American people by the American [00:04:00] government.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:01] Yep. So let's start there. Are we being lied to? Yeah, maybe.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:04:08] Well, it's very important to [00:04:10] be skeptical in a democracy of your government, spokespeople of government officials of the official story. Because many times government [00:04:20] officials do deceive or manipulate or cover up.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:24] This is Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis and the author [00:04:30] of Real Enemies Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy World War 1 to 9 over 11 and Challenging the Secret Government, the post-Watergate investigations of the CIA [00:04:40] and FBI, among other books. And you can trust me, but by all means verify when I tell you that Kathryn has done her research.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:04:49] It's not just [00:04:50] historians who study conspiracy theories, but in general, historians spend their all of their research time trying to find [00:05:00] facts and verify them. And I think a lot of people don't realize that most historical research is archivally [00:05:10] based, where you actually have to go into an archive and you look at government documents, or you look at the private collections of individuals who saved their [00:05:20] letters, and you're going through these very carefully preserved documents, and you're looking for different voices to make sure that you're not just telling the story [00:05:30] of the people in power, but other people who have left records. And you're looking at these records, and then you're eventually [00:05:40] writing peer reviewed articles based on your research, and other historians read your articles and judge whether you have done this [00:05:50] accurately or not, and then pass on whether it can be published. So it is a real intense social, scientific process. [00:06:00] We, as a discipline, as a profession, try very hard to make sure that we are not spreading disinformation. [00:06:10]
Nick Capodice: [00:06:10] This is also what a journalist is doing. Ideally, you don't necessarily take someone or something at face value. You do your research. You're [00:06:20] doing everything in your power to make sure that by the time you tell someone about it, you know it is true.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:27] Yeah. And I also think that that is an important and necessary [00:06:30] skill as a citizen of any nation. Pay attention. Seek trustworthy sources, verify information. So when does skepticism [00:06:40] turn into conspiracy theory?
Katherine Olmsted: [00:06:44] We're verges into conspiracy theory is when you start saying, well, I believe [00:06:50] that there is this hidden group in the government that is pulling all the strings, and I can't prove it, but I'm sure that [00:07:00] it's there. And also, another sign of a conspiracy theory is that it's non-falsifiable that someone shows you evidence that something [00:07:10] is untrue and you say, but no, I just feel it in my bones that I am right. And it's just that the conspirators are so clever that they have covered it up and destroyed [00:07:20] all of the evidence.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:22] A conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable. I had not thought about it that way. You cannot prove a conspiracy theory [00:07:30] wrong.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:30] Take the Obama birth certificate thing, for example. Do you remember where that all started?
Nick Capodice: [00:07:36] I think I do. Didn't it start with Hillary Clinton supporters, like [00:07:40] before the 2008 primary? There was some email suggesting that Obama was not a US citizen and was therefore not eligible for president.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:48] Yeah. So Clinton was [00:07:50] lagging behind in the polls and whether her supporters originated the idea or not, it was some of those die hards who suggested that Obama was ineligible for president. [00:08:00] Also a convenient way to leverage racism while claiming it is about constitutionality anyway. First, Obama and his campaign dismissed it, and then eventually [00:08:10] they were like, you know what?
Derek Arnold: [00:08:12] Fine. Here's my birth certificate. And they looked at it and they go, oh yeah, well, that's the short form. That's not the formal, you know, version of [00:08:20] it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:20] This is Derek Arnold. He teaches communications, including a class on conspiracy theory at Villanova University.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:28] I remember the short form birth [00:08:30] certificate thing. It was as though all these conspiracy theorists had suddenly developed the administrative red tape strictness of the DMV.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:38] And who knows if it might have [00:08:40] ended there. But then Donald Trump went on the Today show and said he had doubts about Obama being a citizen.
Archival: [00:08:48] Donald Trump sure knows how to make [00:08:50] people watch, but many people now, including Republicans, are wondering, are they watching a serious candidate or a circus actor? Does he really believe that President Obama wasn't born in America, [00:09:00] or is he really just selling his favorite product? Trump.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:05] And at this point, Obama was our president. So again, Obama [00:09:10] and his people respond.
Derek Arnold: [00:09:12] So he would go, what the hey? And so fine, here's my long form version of my birth certificate. And they go, oh, by now you just [00:09:20] figured out ways to digitally alter it or whatever.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:22] So yeah, like it started to feel like it wouldn't matter if you had the home video of Obama being born on a beach in Hawaii, [00:09:30] right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:30] No proof could be sufficient proof. You cannot disprove a conspiracy theory, nor importantly can you prove it ideally. [00:09:40] So, for example, if you think about the theory that the government faked the moon landing, Who would know that? Really, only the government.
Derek Arnold: [00:09:49] It's [00:09:50] something that doesn't typically wind up being provable, because some of the information they would need the government or powers to be, they actually [00:10:00] have that. And so when they do, we can't have access to that information because, A, they don't want you to have it, because then I would be able to prove my conspiracy theory. [00:10:10] Or if there is something that slips that, you know, gets out, they say if it's not really helpful for their own conspiracy theory, they will say that, oh, this [00:10:20] got out because, you know, this was something that they really wanted us to have in a way.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:26] So the proof is in the government's hand and they won't give it [00:10:30] to us. So there is no way to prove a theory. Correct. And whatever the government does tell us, if it doesn't support the conspiracy theory, it's actually [00:10:40] part of the conspiracy.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:43] Which puts conspiracy theory in this slippery place. Can't prove it, can't disprove it. And it [00:10:50] grows stronger the more someone tries to prove or disprove it. Derek says his students often come into class excited to talk conspiracy, perhaps [00:11:00] not unlike people listening to this episode right now, only to be a smidge disappointed.
Derek Arnold: [00:11:08] A lot of times the students come in the first day or [00:11:10] two and they're basically saying, oh, this is going to be so cool. All these, you know, great, you know, conspiracy theories they have in their head and they're a little bit like, oh, wait, it's almost like super bored when I [00:11:20] say, okay, we're going to talk about logic. We're going to talk about all these other things as far as argumentation goes and they go, but I want to see all the crazy stuff in a way. And if you tell people [00:11:30] like, here's a regular story where here's the logical and common sense explanation for it, folks are going to be like, oh, wait, but that really wasn't what I signed up for. [00:11:40]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:40] I want to just reiterate that the accepted stories are not always the true story that people in government do lie and manipulate and mislead, [00:11:50] and they should be fact checked. But the thing I find remarkable about conspiracy theories is that they give the big, bad government a whole lot of credit.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:00] Are [00:12:00] you saying it's actually hard to stage a massive, multi-decade cover up, Hannah?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:05] I only mean that while there are definitely secrets the government does not want us to [00:12:10] know does not let us know, the government is also people. You know that scene in All the President's Men where Bob Woodward is meeting his FBI informant, [00:12:20] Deep Throat, aka Mark felt in the parking garage. And Woodward is like, well, we can't figure out this puzzle. It's seeming like there's this cover up here, despite what the government is saying. And Deep Throat [00:12:30] goes.
Archival: [00:12:30] Forget the myths the media's created about the white House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys. And things got out of hand. [00:12:40]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:41] The truth is, these are not very bright guys and things got out of hand.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:47] I absolutely love that scene. It's like, these [00:12:50] are not geniuses. These are people who screwed up.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:54] Yeah. And in this case, Mark felt is saying two things. One, stop taking the [00:13:00] government at its word. And two, this pretty picture you have about the government, a picture that you, the media, helped to create all cleverness and [00:13:10] competence. That is not the real picture.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:13] Right. Quit being so starry eyed and pay attention so you can find the cracks.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:18] So not taking the government [00:13:20] at its word that is essential to a conspiracy theory and perfectly reasonable. Be skeptical and verify. But the other part [00:13:30] of conspiracy theory, the part that goes against Mark Feltes advice conspiracy theory assumes extraordinary cleverness and competence, [00:13:40] as though the government comprises not human beings, as in people who forget things, make mistakes, catch the common [00:13:50] cold, lose their keys, but perfect genius demigods who see everything, know everything and can do anything [00:14:00] and then cover it up so the American people never know.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:14:06] There is an assumption by the conspiracy theorists that [00:14:10] there is this group in charge that controls every aspect of a plot and is able not only to carry [00:14:20] it out, but then to cover it up and to make sure that no one, except maybe the very savvy conspiracy theorists, can uncover it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:28] And Derek made the point that [00:14:30] perhaps there's something comforting about this.
Derek Arnold: [00:14:34] I may not have control at all of my life, but it's nice to know that somebody got this like, you know, [00:14:40] even if it's like to take over the world, they seem to have their act together.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:43] It makes me think of your British friend and the whole secret shadow government thing. Would a secret shadow [00:14:50] government be a good thing in a representative government? No. But would it be nice if there was something bigger and more powerful and [00:15:00] more capable than anyone or anything else to step in and take care of stuff when it all goes sideways?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:05] Maybe in a world of chaos and uncertainty, at [00:15:10] least someone has the ability to take over the world, even if we don't want them to take over the world. So how and why did so many [00:15:20] Americans develop this way of thinking about governmental power and control? I can tell you this much. They came about it honestly. That's after [00:15:30] the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:50] We [00:15:50] are back. We're talking about conspiracy theory in America, what that actually means, and why so many of us have conspiracy theories, or at the very least, [00:16:00] like them. And Hannah, before the break, you said that Americans came by. This kind of thinking, honestly, is conspiracy theory a uniquely [00:16:10] American thing?
Katherine Olmsted: [00:16:11] So it would be incorrect to say that Americans believe conspiracy theories and the rest of the world, or also Americans at [00:16:20] earlier times, are completely rational. It's very human tendency.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:24] This is Katherine Olmstead again.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:16:26] For many decades, the leading scholar [00:16:30] of American conspiracy theories was a historian from Columbia named Richard Hofstadter. He wrote a very famous essay called The Paranoid Style [00:16:40] in American Politics, in which he looked at conspiracy theories back to the Puritans and how they had changed over time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:49] If you research conspiracy [00:16:50] theory and I don't mean investigate conspiracy theories, then you've probably come across Richard Hofstadter.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:16:58] And his argument [00:17:00] was that because America is a nation of immigrants, that many Americans are very anxious to define who they are, what [00:17:10] is American. And so they're always casting out the un-americans. And so there is this desire to find people who are endangering [00:17:20] your country, your republic, and to cast them out. He also had the theory that he used the term [00:17:30] status anxiety to say that America is such a is a, is a it's an economy in which many people are going up and going down. They don't [00:17:40] have necessarily a fixed place. So that creates a certain amount of anxiety that can lead to right wing theorizing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:48] Hofstadter wrote the paranoid [00:17:50] style in American politics, and that was in 1964. So when he talked about the right wing theorizing, he meant and this was in a lot of different ways, the theory [00:18:00] that the communists are everywhere throughout our government and among our citizens, undermining capitalism, religion, education, the press, democracy itself.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:09] And this is at a [00:18:10] time when communism was shorthand for un-American.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:13] Which plenty of people still believe today. But Hofstadter also believed that this [00:18:20] American way of thinking was neither new nor especially right wing.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:25] How not new?
Katherine Olmsted: [00:18:27] There have been conspiracy theories in [00:18:30] U.S. history since the United States was created, or even before. So the conspiracy theories are constant, but the targets of the conspiracy theories, [00:18:40] the villains of the conspiracy theories, change over time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:43] In the very early days, for example, you had the Freemasons in the American colonies and eventually in the [00:18:50] United States. Now the Freemasons evolved from what had been in the Middle Ages in Europe a craftsmen's guild of stonemasons. By the time it was in America, it was [00:19:00] a pretty powerful and influential group of guys who also had secret handshakes and secret meetings. Here's Derek Arnold again.
Derek Arnold: [00:19:10] They [00:19:10] have these secret ceremonies. When it came to when not so much the things that they would talk about outside in the meetings or in the meetings themselves. But it was almost like the the [00:19:20] actual kinds of steps and procedures and stuff. So like if somebody got promoted to a next level up of, of the Masons and people say, well, why would you have to do [00:19:30] those things in secret? And they guys just kind of how we do it to kind of, you know, make sure we've got the trust of the people to make sure that they are basically consistent and for our ideals [00:19:40] and stuff. And that wound up being, I think, part of the idea of how the Freemasons began to be a little bit more suspected.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:47] It didn't help things that in 1776, [00:19:50] the Illuminati was established in Bavaria. Both the Freemasons and the Illuminati were all about enlightenment thinking, reason. The [00:20:00] Illuminati were also opposed to abuses of monarchical power and the influence of religion, and in America that was spun into a [00:20:10] fear that the Illuminati wanted to destroy religion and overthrow all European government.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:17] But that's Europe, and that's not the Freemasons. [00:20:20]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:20] And the Illuminati had been squashed in Bavaria pretty darn quickly. But it doesn't really matter. They kind of rhyme. A pastor in Boston, Jedidiah Morse [00:20:30] delivered a sermon warning against an Illuminati plot in the United States. The president of Yale University, Timothy Dwight, did the same thing, claiming [00:20:40] that the Illuminati in America sought, quote, the overthrow of religion, government, and human society. Civil and domestic. At [00:20:50] the same time, the country had very recently and very successfully developed a two party political system, [00:21:00] Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.
Derek Arnold: [00:21:03] 1796 and 1800. Those two elections, when you have Adams and Jefferson, who are [00:21:10] good friends, wind up basically at each other's throats.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:13] Now, those two men I mentioned who were warning against the dangers of the Illuminati in America, Jedidiah Morse, [00:21:20] the Boston pastor, and Timothy Dwight the Yalie. They were both Federalists, aka pro John Adams, who was running [00:21:30] against Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican who also happened to be a deist, meaning believes in God, but not so much religious constrictions and iffy [00:21:40] on the dogma of Christianity. Jefferson also liked France. Where revolution happens.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:47] Happened here too.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:48] That is beside the point. People thought France [00:21:50] wanted us to overthrow our brand new government anyway. Dwight ends up saying that while he can't say for sure who is an Illuminati member in the United States, [00:22:00] he'd put Thomas Jefferson at the top of the list.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:03] Because he's not religious and he likes France.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:06] I'm painting in broad strokes here, but you know what? So did Dwight. [00:22:10] So yeah. And then actually, the smear campaign backfired. And a disgruntled preacher who never made it big in New England took the Illuminati fear and [00:22:20] ran with it. And he was like, of course, Jedidiah Morse and Timothy Dwight are ranting against the Illuminati. They are the Illuminati and the Illuminati is [00:22:30] an anti-religion. It is actually trying to create a secret state run religion.
Nick Capodice: [00:22:36] Wow. Talk about reaping what you sow.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:39] Of course, it didn't help [00:22:40] that John Adams, despite being very much for religious freedom, called for a national day of fasting and prayer and got accused of trying to mandate faith. [00:22:50]
Nick Capodice: [00:22:50] Oh, boy. Sit down John.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:53] But basically, Nick, what you have got here is a picture of power secret clubs. They're coming for our religion. They're coming for our [00:23:00] government. They're coming for our democracy. They're coming for our America. And it never went away. Here's Kathryn Olmsted again.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:23:10] In [00:23:10] the 1800s, there were many conspiracy theories about religious minorities in a Protestant nation. So anti-Catholic conspiracy [00:23:20] theories, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. There were also many anti-Mormon conspiracy theories. There were conspiracy theories by the late [00:23:30] 1800s about large corporations, and these were economic conspiracy theories that distant corporations, railroads, banks [00:23:40] were conspiring against the people. So you have this mix of conspiracy theories about minority groups and then about concentrated [00:23:50] capital. But there's not a lot of anti-government conspiracy theories until the early 1900s.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:58] Hang on. But wasn't the Illuminati [00:24:00] stuff anti-government?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:01] Not quite. It was a fear that a single person or a single group was going to undermine or destroy the government. Our democracy. But [00:24:10] the prevailing idea that the government itself was the bad guy. That took a while.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:24:17] Until you get to about World War One. And [00:24:20] what I argue in my book, Real Enemies, is that that's because that's when the government gets big, that the U.S. government began developing a secret [00:24:30] state, the capacity to spy on dissenters, to monitor its own people around about the period of World War One. So the U.S. [00:24:40] entered the war in 1917. And it's as the U.S. government criminalizes dissent in World War One. And as it starts surveilling domestic [00:24:50] dissidents, there start to be a lot more anti-government conspiracy theories.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:58] The anti-government conspiracy [00:25:00] theories did not start right away, though.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:25:03] So one of the first is about the U.S. entry into World War One and the belief increasingly [00:25:10] after it's over. So not so much at the time, but by the 1930s, a lot of Americans look back at that and say, what a mistake. Why did the U.S. get involved [00:25:20] in that war? That was really a horrific war for the men who fought it. And so why did that happen? And they say, well, you know, actually [00:25:30] it was a conspiracy by U.S. banks that wanted to get their money out of the allied countries that wanted the allies to win so that they would [00:25:40] get their loans repaid. And it was a conspiracy by arms manufacturers who wanted to sell guns to all the sides. So there's there's that [00:25:50] conspiracy theory in World War One. And every major U.S. war in the 20th century triggers conspiracy theorizing. So in World War [00:26:00] Two, there were some people on the far right who thought that the U.S. was involved in the wrong war with the wrong enemy, that really the United [00:26:10] States should be fighting against the Soviet Union rather than with the Soviet Union, against the Nazis.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:19] You know, the [00:26:20] concern that we get involved in war for the wrong reasons. That we're fighting the wrong people. That money and profit has something to do with it. That is not entirely [00:26:30] absurd.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:32] Definitely not. There's something there.
Derek Arnold: [00:26:35] I tell my classes, like maybe 10 to 15% of all the conspiracy theories [00:26:40] you will hear have something to them. Doesn't mean that they're true, but it's just enough to lure you to go farther.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:46] Okay. So if, for example, World War two is confusing, [00:26:50] if the alliances seem weird, if Americans don't entirely like what they're seeing, conspiracy theory can take those sort of vague understandings [00:27:00] and push them even further.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:27:02] And so these people on the far right said, well, I think that Franklin Roosevelt tricked us into the war by [00:27:10] deliberately exposing the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and setting up the fleet to be attacked, and then failing to warn [00:27:20] the commanders there so that Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories become a staple of the. Of the far right in the 1940s and 50s. Then [00:27:30] in the 1950s, there's anti-communist conspiracy theories that there are communists who have infiltrated the U.S. government and [00:27:40] are manipulating U.S. foreign policy to benefit the Soviet Union.
Archival: [00:27:44] Even if there are only one communist in the State Department, that would still be one Communist too many. [00:27:50]
Katherine Olmsted: [00:27:51] And then in the 1960s, with the JFK assassination, the energy and conspiracy theories isn't just limited [00:28:00] to people on the right, but instead the JFK conspiracy theories are much more widespread. And they're on the left and the right.
Archival: [00:28:09] There may be [00:28:10] something abroad in the land that wants not to believe. The report's conclusion that President Kennedy was the victim of a lone madman and not of a conspiracy.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:28:19] And there [00:28:20] are many more ordinary citizens who get excited by energized by these theories and think I can solve them, that [00:28:30] I am a historical detective. I'm going to go to Dallas, and I'm going to find witnesses. And I am going to study the sewer system, [00:28:40] and I'm going to look at manholes, and I'm going to walk in the footsteps of Lee Harvey Oswald, and I'm going to solve this myself. And they [00:28:50] bring this sort of citizen detective energy to conspiracy theories. And then in the 1970s, [00:29:00] after Watergate, after the Vietnam War, exposed a lot of government lies, then you have a lot more people, a lot more Americans who [00:29:10] distrust the government and who are increasingly inclined to believe all sorts of conspiracy theories.
Archival: [00:29:17] The president himself admitted he has lost his impeachment [00:29:20] fight in the House, that he has not always given the public the straight story on Watergate, and that he withheld from his lawyers and the House committee certain damaging information. Dan Rather [00:29:30] reports.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:34] Watergate is a really important example here, and I know that we talked about it a little already, but Watergate [00:29:40] was a conspiracy. Woodward and Bernstein were right.
Archival: [00:29:45] Bernstein listen, it goes all the way to stands.
Archival: [00:29:46] What are you talking about?
Archival: [00:29:47] It goes all the way to stans. He gave the check to stands for the [00:29:50] Committee to Reelect.
Archival: [00:29:51] Did he say that?
Archival: [00:29:52] He said it. I've got it on my notes. It's down on record. Bernstein.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:29:57] Woodward and Bernstein were viewed by [00:30:00] their peers as people who were unnecessarily fixated on potential wrongdoing in the Nixon administration, [00:30:10] when, in fact, they believed that the press corps should be taking the president and his officials at their word. But Woodward and Bernstein decided [00:30:20] no. We believe that there is this conspiracy and we are going to uncover it. And of course, they they started a movement that brought down a president. And [00:30:30] then they were glorified in popular culture, in great texts like All the President's Men. So that conspiracy theories today, [00:30:40] conspiracy theorists can look back on that and say, well, I want to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. I'm not going to listen. When people say I'm wrong, I'm a conspiracy [00:30:50] theorist. I'm going to uncover the truth.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:56] So Watergate actually fuels the [00:31:00] conspiracy theory fire.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:01] Well, think about it. It is proof that the government cannot be trusted. It is proof that the government lies, that the government covers [00:31:10] things up. And what happens after Watergate reveals even more proof that the American government is a slippery one.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:31:21] After [00:31:20] Watergate, Congress has investigations into possible abuses by secret government agencies, and [00:31:30] these investigations then come up with a lot of evidence of previous government abuses. So, for example, that the FBI spied on Martin Luther King and [00:31:40] civil rights leaders, that the CIA worked with the mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Archival: [00:31:47] One of the problems in the very beginning, in 1960, was that the [00:31:50] CIA wanted to try and kill Fidel Castro without it being obvious that it was the CIA that was trying to kill him.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:31:56] And so then by the late 20th century, there [00:32:00] are these anti-government conspiracy theories are widespread. They are mainstreamed. They are in pop culture. The X-Files, for example, runs for [00:32:10] 11 seasons, starting in the 1990s.
Archival: [00:32:13] What are they trying to do?
Archival: [00:32:15] That's the missing piece.
Archival: [00:32:16] But it's not hard to imagine a government hiding, [00:32:20] hoarding alien technology for 70 years at the expense of human life and the future of the planet.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:32:26] There's a lot of pop culture that you can consume [00:32:30] about government conspiracies and how the government is conspiring against you. And then finally, when we get into the 21st century, there's nine over 11 attacks, [00:32:40] which is a traumatic event. The Bush administration then leads the U.S. into war against Iraq. So you have another war decision that leads to conspiracy [00:32:50] theories about how did we get in this war? Well, it must be there was a conspiracy by people within the government against the American people.
Archival: [00:32:58] There is solid evidence [00:33:00] that members of the Saudi royal family were working with al Qaeda terrorists.
Archival: [00:33:06] The 9/11 Commission, not surprisingly, ignored this subject [00:33:10] altogether.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:14] So again, I said, Americans come by this honestly, and I'm not saying that all Americans are conspiracy [00:33:20] theorists, and I'm not saying that all conspiracy theorists are way out of bounds. And when Katherine Olmstead started writing about conspiracy theories, she understood [00:33:30] that there was a balance here.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:33:31] I actually got interested in this subject because the first book that I published was called Challenging the Secret Government. It was [00:33:40] about the congressional investigations of the CIA and FBI right after Watergate. But people started contacting me from [00:33:50] all over the country who wanted to tell me their stories about how they believed that they were the subjects of conspiracies by the government, [00:34:00] the targets of conspiracies, and they wanted me to help them research what they saw as their own oppression, or they just wanted someone to listen to [00:34:10] their stories, and some of them were not very persuasive in the stories that they told. But there were [00:34:20] people who were very persuasive, who believed that the FBI, for example, or the CIA, had been surveilling them when they were activists against the Vietnam War. [00:34:30] And so I was very interested, got very interested in how do you draw that line between people who you think are [00:34:40] delusional and people who actually have been surveilled by or oppressed by the government? And how do you how do you verify that? And how do [00:34:50] you respectfully tell the stories of the people who believe these theories?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:01] What [00:35:00] I found really interesting about Catherine's approach to conspiracy theory came in part through her answer to a question that I myself do not really know [00:35:10] how to answer. Do you have a favorite conspiracy theory? And should you have a favorite conspiracy theory?
Katherine Olmsted: [00:35:20] I [00:35:20] would say that because of recent events where it seems like so many conspiracy theories have harmful effects, I don't really [00:35:30] have a favorite conspiracy theory. I'm just worried about the deleterious effects of all of them.
Nick Capodice: [00:35:36] Like the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism, leading [00:35:40] to unvaccinated children leading to measles outbreaks.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:44] Or that the 2020 election was rigged and votes were illegitimate, leading to widespread mistrust of [00:35:50] the election process and the legitimacy of our elected officials and an insurrection.
Archival: [00:35:55] Events in Washington have taken a violent and tumultuous turn in the past few hours, as [00:36:00] thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the US Capitol building, venting their anger at the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential election.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:08] In fact, it's not just [00:36:10] the suggestion that the election system is rigged, but that every thing is rigged. Nothing can be trusted.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:36:17] I have to say that in recent years, it [00:36:20] has been a little bit harder to remain sympathetic when some of the anti-government conspiracy theories are not intriguing or or based [00:36:30] on real events, but just outright lies.
Nick Capodice: [00:36:34] That is an interesting point that Katherine's making. Some of the conspiracy theories today just [00:36:40] aren't intriguing. They're not working within reality, within actual things that are actually going on.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:47] They are also a powerful [00:36:50] distraction.
Katherine Olmsted: [00:36:51] Thomas Pynchon, the novelist, said, essentially, if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about [00:37:00] answers. So that if you are distracted by asking the wrong questions and trying to prove mysteries that [00:37:10] don't exist, then that means you don't have the attention or energy to devote to the real problems in American society and the real mysteries to be exposed.
Nick Capodice: [00:37:19] What's [00:37:20] going on at the Watergate while you're storming the pizza place?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:23] And who stands to gain by sending you in the wrong direction? Because conspiracy [00:37:30] is real. Undermining and attacking American democracy, education, sources of information. That's all real. All of that stuff that even the early [00:37:40] American people were really worried about. And it's often committed by not very bright people who let things get out of hand, which is a [00:37:50] whole lot easier to do when people are looking the other way. This [00:38:00] episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Marina Henke is our producer, Dana [00:38:10] Cataldo is our digital producer, and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. You can find a transcript for this episode, as well as everything else we [00:38:20] have ever made at Civics101podcast.org dot org. And while you're there, if you have questions about the American government, how it works, whether it works, and the mistakes it has definitely [00:38:30] made, you can ask us, just click the Ask a Question button on our home page, which again is civics101podcast.org dot org. Civics 101 is a production of [00:38:40] NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
