Pipes is particularly interested in the way Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany embodied both conspiracy and conspiracist thinking, and he dismisses even the Kennedy assassination with a few references to the obviousness of the absurdity of conspiracy theories offered to explain it. Leftist readers, however, might detect a conspiracy behind Pipes's analysis of the groups promulgating today's conspiracy theories. But while Pipes is happily negative about conspiracism from all walks of life, his context for Leftist conspiracism seems a little broad. In short, Rightist conspiracists are obviously disaffected and cut off from power, but Leftist conspiracists are around us, and in positions of influence besides. A political slant to keep in mind when reading the journal, to be sure.
Conspiracy is an appealing book.
Fundamentally reasonable and filled with all kinds of interesting stuff about the Freemasons and the Illuminati, it's a helpful primer on the terms that always pop up when conspiracy theories are described. The descriptions of wily Leftists with their access to the corridors of power is appealing, too, at least to this liberal feeling pained by a swing to the conservative side of America's political spectrum. And so, as all good books that concern paranoids should, Conspiracy both models and requires nimble critical thinking. The Net Net and individual artists and authors. Do not reproduce contents of this site without permission of The Net Net and the artist or author.