90% of Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory

On 22 November 2021, a crowd of 100 or so people gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the site of John F Kennedy’s assassination 58 years before.

They were convinced that JFK’s son, John F Kennedy Jr, was about to return, to take his place as vice-president alongside a reinstated Donald Trump, to battle the satanic paedophile cabal that had taken over Washington. Some even waved “Trump-Kennedy 2024” banners.

Never mind that JFK Jr died in a plane crash in 1999: these people were credulous enough to believe the QAnon conspiracy theory.

When JFK Jr failed to materialise, they promised he would appear at the Rolling Stones’ concert in Dallas that night. Some also reckoned JFK Jr would be accompanied by other not-really-dead figures, including Robin Williams, Michael Jackson and a 104-year-old JFK.

Inevitably, none of this came to pass. But if you wanted to trace the origins of our conspiracy-addled times, Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963 might well be ground zero.

The assassination of JFK was probably the genesis of the post-truth, fake-news, “don’t trust the experts”, “do your own research” brand of media scepticism and alternative information ecosystems.

Of course, conspiracy theories existed before the assassination of JFK. But it was one of the first events to unfold in real time in the age of mass media. The public heard about it as it happened, via live news and radio broadcasts.

They followed its immediate aftermath, from the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby on live television two days later, to the non-stop television coverage of Kennedy’s funeral, to the commemorative magazines.

It wasn’t just the death of a president: JFK’s assassination 60 years ago also represents the death of a whole postwar worldview of security, stability and certainty.

To some, it was a moment that “splintered our sense of reality”, says Clare Birchall, a professor of contemporary culture at King’s College London, who has written extensively on conspiracy culture.

She cites the postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, who wrote about how the event represented the “coming of age of the whole media culture”, and the novelist Don DeLillo, who once said it had led to “a much more deeply unsettled feeling about our grip on reality”.

Part of the reason the assassination was so different – so disturbing, so conspiracy-theory-friendly – was that, on the face of it, events just didn’t add up.

How could it be possible that Oswald, an apparent nobody with an old sniper rifle, had pulled off such a crime single-handedly? The Warren commission, investigating the assassination, ruled out other possibilities in 1964, but rather than putting the issue to bed it only fuelled more questions.

Why did Oswald claim he was a “patsy”? Why did Ruby really kill Oswald? Who else wanted Kennedy dead? The mafia? The communists? The military-industrial complex? The CIA? Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s vice-president and successor? All of them?

It was the beginning of a move in the US “away from conspiracy theories about the external threats of communist Russia and towards a more inward-looking suspicion about one’s own government”, says Birchall.

As the 1960s and 70s unfolded, there were further reasons to distrust official narratives: the Vietnam war, Watergate and the US’s shady interventions in foreign countries from Chile to Indonesia, not to mention the assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK’s brother Bobby.

As it happened, many of these did involve conspiracies………

In the 21st century, though, everything began to flip. The internet hastened the rise of a new breed of conspiracist – and of conspiracist enterprise. Chatrooms and social media helped people spread and monetise their content, while rejection by the mainstream media became a badge of honour. There were fresh conspiracies to examine, from 9/11, to renewed claims that the moon landings were faked, to endless speculation about the “murder” of Diana, Princess of Wales.……

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...of-conspiracy-theories?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other