ABSTRACT
Unlike the history of many other regions and cultures, the history of American conspiracy theories has already been well researched (see, among others, Goldberg 2001; Olmsted 2009; Barkun 2013). This article can therefore draw on a comparatively rich body of previous research, without, however, sharing their assumptions and conclusions. More specifically, the narrative I will relate here differs significantly from the most well-known account of U.S. conspiracy theories provided by Richard Hofstadter in his seminal essay ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’. Hofstadter acknowledged that conspiracy theories had a long history in the U.S.A. but argued that they had always ‘been the preferred style only of minority movements’ (1964: 7 [italics in the original]). Many scholars have drawn on this argument and have suggested that, ironically, exactly at the time when Hofstadter was making this claim, conspiracy theories were beginning to move from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Focusing on the contemporary period, these studies argue that conspiracy theories have become more widely spread and influential than ever (Knight 2000; Melley 2000; Barkun 2013). This argument sounds very convincing at first, considering the attention that has been paid to conspiracy theories in recent years. With a president prone to use conspiracist rhetoric currently in the White House, it is not surprising that some very recent studies suggest that, due to political polarisation and the echo chambers of the Internet, conspiracy theories are now more popular than ever (Merlan 2019; Muirhead, Rosenblum 2019).
