REVIEWED BY MICHEL JACQUES GAGNÉ
Oxford University Press, 2019. 511pp. Paperback, $29.95. ISBN-13: 978-0190844080
The academic study of the causes and consequences of conspiracy theorising- what some call “conspiratology”-is not new. Philosopher Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945), liberal historian Richard Hofstadter (The Paranoid Style in American Politics, 1965), and conservative historian Daniel Pipes (Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From, 1997) helped pioneer the study of conspiracy beliefs (henceforth “conspiracism”) during the last century. Some of the conclusions they shared included that conspiracism is largely the fruit of radical ideologies, paranoid sentiments, xenophobia, a lack of healthy skepticism, and that the average believer in secretive plots is most likely male, mediocre, and mentally deranged