![]() ![]() government engaged in years of horrific medical experiments without consent on thousands of prisoners, disabled children, and terminally ill patients as well as the infamous "Tuskegee experiments," in which Black men went untreated for syphilis long after a known cure in the form of penicillin was available. Women were convicted and executed under pernicious falsehoods in the Salem witch trials in 17th century Massachusetts, while it appears that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating John F. Merlan walks readers through famous conspiracy theories in U.S. This vision of a fiddling Nero, however, is apparently attributable to a sole source - Tacitus - who recorded the events years after Rome went to ashes. To demonstrate that conspiracy theories have been with us throughout history, Merlan goes back to Emperor Nero, famously said to have fiddled while Rome burned. ![]() desperate to find someone to blame," and (2) rising disenfranchisement, people feeling "shut out of systems of power." Conspiracy theories flourish in times of rapid social change, she says, "when we're reevaluating ourselves, and perhaps, facing uncomfortable questions in the process." ![]() Merlan explains that today's conspiracy thinking arises from (1) increasingly rigid class structure, leaving "many people locked into their circumstances. Throughout the book, she reports from gatherings of people whose beliefs are both extreme and false. While every generation produces rumor-mongers, today we anoint them with special powers through social media.Īnna Merlan, a journalist at Gizmodo Media Group, explores our contemporary fixation with conspiracy theories of all political stripes in Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power. Since its founding, America has been fertile ground for conspiracy beliefs. ![]()
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