Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/27/anatomy-of-a-conspiracy-theory/
Date Written:  2019-09-27
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23795

Conspiracy theories in general tend to be crude and simplistic, more often than not reflecting the nature of the people who indulge them. But when the conspiracy theory is mingled with antisemitism – as with the Rothschild rot – it represents a particular failure of the imagination, a particularly null and void exercise in dehumanisation.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

Why has antisemitism been such a dominant refrain in the formation of so many conspiracy theories? Well, for the following perhaps. A conspiracy theory is almost never about the attempt to explain a particular conspiracy in isolation. Rather it would be better be described as a world view; the endeavour to make sense of history more broadly by exposing and revealing its prime mover – the elite agency or group which is veiled and yet at the same time seems to have almost unlimited power and is thus capable of directing the stream of world historic events, channelling them in its favour.