Jon E. Lewis - The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups: The 100 Most Terrifying Conspiracies of All Time

Jon E. Lewis is a writer and historian. His many previous books include the best-selling The Mammoth Book of the Edge, The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Everest and The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys.

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With Emma Daffern

ROBINSON

London

Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2008

Collection and editorial material copyright J. Lewis-Stempel and Emma Daffern, 2008

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-84529-608-7

Printed and bound in the EU

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

This is the boom time of conspiracy theory. 9/11, the War on Terror, the death of Diana, Opus Dei (as featured in Dan Browns bestselling conspiracy novel The Da Vinci Code): the list of conspiracies seemingly perpetrated by them against us goes on endlessly. More and more people subscribe to alternative histories of events, such as Michael Moores celebrated documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, and less and less do people accept the word of the establishment of government, business, the Church at face value.

The conspiracy theory boom has been rolling towards us and gathering pace since 22 November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That the most famous man in the world could be murdered in broad Texan sunlight by a lone gunman beggared belief. A sense of innocence was lost that day. It was beaten into oblivion by the succession of American figures who were also, supposedly, assassinated by lone gunmen: Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The proof that there was something rotten in the state of Western politics came in the next decade. Watergate.

Of course, there were conspiracies and assumed conspiracies before 1963: some considered the Bolsheviks a product of conspiracy, others the Jews, yet others the Freemasons and yet more the bankers of Wall Street. Hitlers Nazis indisputably conspired to burn the Reichstag, put the blame on the Communists, and so engineer a coup dtat. But in 1963 paranoia began to eat away at the soul of society. Conspiracy theories spread from the fringe into the centre of the body politic.

The word conspiracy comes from the Latin conspirare, meaning to breathe together. But everybody understands its time-amended meaning of two or more individuals secretly plotting and perpetrating an action that would be widely considered negative or harmful to specific individuals, or to society as a whole. Nobody conspires to do something good, like feed the poor. Conspiracy theory is the how and the why of the plot, and the mechanics of the cover-up. Almost without exception the alternative conspiracy theory of history proposes that any large-scale or far-reaching event was not the result of chance or of accident, or of the widely accepted view of its cause, but of some secret plan by someone, somewhere.

Or the event didnt happen. Period. Thus Hitler still lives. As does Elvis (whose name is a natty anagram of LIVES).

It has been said that conspiracy theory is the new religion. With the decline of a widespread belief in God, people seek the guilty hand of man (or alien invaders) in unfathomable events. The new power is a secret cabal. This cabal goes under numerous names (and its composition depends on the political eye of the beholder) and paradoxically the smaller a cabal is suspected of being, the more powerful its hold is thought to be. The Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission are just three of the tiny elites believed to pull the strings of the entire world.

If conspiracy theory is the new religion, the new medium for spreading its word is the internet. Once upon a printed-piece-of-paper time, counter beliefs would spread oh so slowly, via samizdat magazines and word of mouth. Nowadays a variant thought, conjecture, a piece of evidence from anybody with access to a PC and a telephone line is transmitted around the globe in seconds. Dissemination of material over the internet mainly sidesteps the censorship of states and companies. Its a space where the truth can emerge into the light.

The internet is also a democracy of fools, where everybodys opinion is aired as though of equal merit: a cyberspace where the lunatic and the malicious weigh in at the same weight as the rational, concerned citizen. Just as some people believe just about every conspiracy theory punted their way, the madness of some internet-borne conspiracy theories produces an opposite reaction: numerous rational citizens disbelieve every conspiracy theory they encounter. Its the fear of association. After all, who wants to be connected even remotely with David Ickes shape-shifting lizards or the Aryan supremacists who reckon that Adolf Hitler is currently shacked up in an ice-cave in Antarctica?