Conspiracy rhetoric at the dawn of the new millennium: A response

EMILE DURKHEIM ONCE OBSERVED: "There is perhaps no collective representation which is not, in some sense delirious" (qtd. in Moscovici, 1987, p. 157). I begin this response by acknowledging that we all might be more prone than we realize to the powerful, often beguiling nature of conspiracy appeals.

As Stewart, Smith, & Denton (1994, pp. 52-53) observe, a "conspiracy may be real or imagined, but the process is the same; a chain of apparently unrelated events or actions is linked to reveal concerted actions and intentions to cause all sorts of social, economic, political, religious, and moral problems."1 In the process, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. It also may be difficult to avoid delirium.

The Continuing Appeal of the Birch Society

Robert Welch once publicly asserted that Republican Senator Robert Taft had died of cancer that had been passed on to him by Soviet operatives through "a radium tube planted in the upholstery of his Senate seat" (Pipes, 1997, p. 37). The description of this absurd scenario can take on the patina of legitimacy when, for example, such claims are made in a cold war setting where reputable sources report that KGB agents, in an effort to get a British spy out of a room, smeared a poisonous substance on a chair and made the intended victim violently ill. Telling the real from the imaginary can be a difficult and demanding task. There are legions of subjective judgments attached.