The sheer number and variety of conspiracy theories suggest that they are not so much about trying to understand a handful of big events, or about piecing together evidence into a better explanation; instead, conspiracy theories find homes with people who have a conspiracy mentality.
Put simply, and not surprisingly, some people are inherently more disposed toward seeing conspiracy theories than others. People who are more disposed will believe in many conspiracy theories, and will not require much evidence to do so. To them, conspiracies lurk behind every corner. Those less disposed will require greater proof, because to them, conspiracies are not the norm—our powerful institutions are generally to be trusted. This is not to demean those who believe in conspiracy theories in any way—nor is it meant to demean those who don’t believe. Everyone has their own set of ideologies and worldviews that color the lenses through which they see the world. (Political left-right ideology immediately comes to mind.) These ideologies operate in the background, without us even knowing that they are guiding how we view the world.
This makes the discussion of conspiracy theories very difficult. Because belief in conspiracy theories is partially dependent on our underlying worldview, such beliefs are hard to negotiate. If information isn’t driving a belief, information will not change that belief. And this makes studying conspiratorial beliefs even more difficult. People rarely like to admit that their beliefs could turn on something other than a fair and unbiased survey of the evidence. But, since Freud, we have known that our beliefs and actions are driven by unconscious forces and desires.
Finally, we learned that those disposed toward conspiracy theories are slightly more accepting of violence. Does this mean that we should run home and lock the doors? No. If conspiracy theories always or even frequently drove violence, then the streets would run red with blood. (They don’t.) There are of course high-profile examples of conspiracy theorists committing violence—think Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. But these high-profile examples are not indicative of the larger pattern. Instead we find that those who feel under threat from shadowy powerful forces feel more compelled to confront it than those who don’t feel such threat.
But to put all of this in context, conspiracy theories, while often getting a bad rap, offer some benefits for society. They are an unflattering way to speak truth to power. They are a tool for the weak to keep the strong in check. They can bring new information to light. And most importantly, they can sometimes be true. Think of two young journalists at the Washington Post who followed a conspiracy theory to bring down a sitting president.
Since we completed our work on American Conspiracy Theories, the country has witnessed a string of conspiracy theories that have invaded all aspects of culture. The Malaysian jet airliner that went missing in March 2014 conjured up plots involving the CIA, the Russians, the Chinese, UFOs, and even black holes. Derek Jeter’s performance in his last game at Yankee Stadium was met with conspiracy theories (mostly emanating from people in the Boston area). The Patriots’ playoff victories were surrounded by conspiracy theories involving deflated footballs (mostly emanating from people not in the Boston area). An outbreak of measles in Disneyland in California led to a renewed discussion of the safety of vaccines and fears that “big pharma” is hiding the dangerous effects of vaccines in order to guard its profits. Several states in 2014 considered measures that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods; proponents of the measures argued that the company that manufactured GMO seeds was purposefully hiding the dangers of the crops.
More recently, the CIA has been accused of hiding the existence of giant humans roaming the earth. Apparently, finding out about giants would be too much for Americans to handle, and the CIA needs to keep people safely pacified and in the dark when it comes to giants.
And just because new conspiracy theories have splashed across the radar doesn’t mean the old favorites have disappeared. Illuminati conspiracies, popular in the early 1800s, still exist—it’s just that instead of accusing Thomas Jefferson of being an Illuminati agent, Kanye, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z are now our Illuminati overlords.
As explanations of how the world works, conspiracy theories offer tantalizing accounts that all of us fall victim to at one time or another—the only difference is which theory, when, and based on what evidence. When I was a much younger student, I found myself attracted to Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. Having now seen the film a hundred times, I can easily spot the numerous plot holes, and I am aware that much of the evidence purporting to show a conspiracy is simply made up. Oliver Stone has admitted as much. But at the time, the idea of secret machinations involving the CIA, the military, Cuban exiles, the Dallas police, the Warren Commission, the media, the mob, and the New Orleans homosexual underground seemed entirely plausible.
The movie conjured in me a feeling that there were things out there that I didn’t know, and I didn’t know them because they were being purposely hidden from me. If a conspiracy could bring about the assassination of a president in broad daylight, what else was a charade? Was anything real? These are unsettling thoughts that can lead to Matrix-like thinking: are we just brains sitting in a jar somewhere with a computer monitoring our phony experiences? Quite unsettling indeed.
It wasn’t until 9/11 that I had to confront my own conspiratorial mindset in the interpretation of events that I was experiencing firsthand. Having Yankees tickets for September 10 (against the Red Sox) and September 11 (against the White Sox), I took the train in from New Haven to New York to celebrate my birthday. The Red Sox game was rained out. The next morning I awoke in midtown Manhattan to a changed world. Television reports early in the morning suggested to me that some small planes had gotten off course and crashed by accident. Information about the nineteen hijackers came out later in the day. I thought it wise to head from Midtown down to lower Manhattan to witness the tragedy in person.
One interaction I had there has always stuck with me. As I came within a few blocks of the burning towers, the National Guard had already begun to deploy on the street corners. The girl I was with at the time had purchased a camera and began taking pictures of the chaos that was unfolding around us. As we wandered down the street, a National Guardsman, complete with heavy artillery, shouted at us, “No pictures!” So we took a picture of him and ran!
Why would we be told not to take pictures? Surely there were thousands of people in the area witnessing the events. Was there something to hide, and if so, what would stopping me from taking pictures with my disposable Kodak do? Was this person attempting to conceal a plot? Was he under orders from higher-ups to limit the flow of information out of lower Manhattan? Or—as I am convinced—was he simply a public servant with the best of intentions doing the best he could under chaotic and uncertain conditions?
It was almost a decade later that I paid cash at a local coffee shop in Miami and got back a dollar bill. I noticed stamped on the bill in bright red was the phrase, “Do the Math: Drones + Implosions + Fake Planes on T.V. = 9-11 INSIDE JOB.” Interestingly, the bill was a series 2006. The person who stamped the bill did so at least five years after the attacks. This led to me to think about the sustained emotional energy and effort needed to carry the flag for a conspiracy theory for that long. Indeed, there are many true believers out there.
As you peruse the beautifully written stories in the remainder of this book, I urge you to be cognizant of your feelings as the various conspiracies unfold. Despite the skepticism I have developed over the course of my research toward certain conspiracy theories, I still get a strange feeling when a good plot unfolds before my eyes. There is nothing like it.
Joseph E. Uscinski, PhD, is associate professor in the University of Miami political science department. He teaches courses on and researches conspiracy theories, media bias, public opinion, popular culture, elections, Congress, the Constitution, and the presidency and vice-presidency. He is co-author, with Joseph M. Parent, of American Conspiracy Theories, and he organized the 201
5 Conspiracy Theory Conference held at the University of Miami.
Under the Grassy Knoll
by Richard Gleaves
A tourist bus pulled up alongside the Texas School Book Depository. The door blew open and a mix of American and foreign sightseers plopped out. Young, old, fat, thin. An Asian man with dark sunglasses and a white cane, a gay couple in their thirties, three chubby platinum blondes with Louisiana accents, a man dwarfed by his own ten-gallon hat, an African-American woman, visibly shaken, carrying a picture of JFK under her arm. The picket fence atop the grassy knoll put an arm around this motley group, as if to say, “howdy, friends,” and Dealey Plaza accepted a trickle of Yankee accents and camera clicks and gallows humor. The trickle spread down the brown slope, breaking into little clots of assassination buffs and pilgrims that congealed along Elm Street, gawking at the white “X” painted in the center of the road.
Don Petterman cursed to himself. It was unprofessional to just be setting up when the crowds were already arriving, but his rusty truck was on its last legs and he’d barely made it into Dallas through morning traffic. Don’s knees popped three times as he knelt on the sidewalk below the knoll. He stabbed his tripod into the dirt—just next to the JFK memorial plaque—getting its pointy feet in deep so the wind wouldn’t knock his display over. A grackle landed nearby and hopped past, searching in the grass for some crumb. The bird found a french fry—like a gold nugget in the weeds—and flew off with it triumphantly. The sight made Don grin.
There’s hope for us all.
A shadow fell on the grass. “Merry Christmas!”
Don looked up. A man in a business suit stood above, extending a twenty-dollar bill folded lengthwise.
“Merry Christmas!” said Don, beaming. He’d made a sale! And the day had barely started!
“You setting up?” said the man.
Don nodded. “Runnin’ a little late!” He picked up his laminate poster board and struggled to his feet, brushing his knees. He put the board on the tripod, making sure it was level, then turned back to the man. “How many DVDs would you like?”
“DVDs?”
Don nodded. “Cleanest copy of the Zapruder film ever sold. They’re ten dollars each. You want two?”
Don reached for the twenty, but the man pulled it away. He was staring at the pictures on the poster board: black-and-white blow-ups of the Kennedy autopsy photographs, the dead eyes of the thirty-fifth president open and vacant as buttons on a doll.
“Oh. Sorry,” said the businessman. “I thought you were… Salvation Army.” He gave Don a dubious look, pocketed the twenty, and hurried up the sidewalk.
Don sighed. Oh well. Honest mistake. I do look like a bell-ringing Santa with a kettle. Maybe he shouldn’t have worn his red three-button cardigan today. But he wasn’t that fat. Not yet. And his beard had plenty of grey still, on his chin and in his sideburns at least, even if the rest had gone white.
He arranged a little table in front of the tripod and laid some DVDs on it, then knelt again and plugged the cord of his new iPad into the DieHard battery he kept hidden under the plastic skirt. The iPad had been a Christmas gift from his daughter—so he could swipe credit cards and not be stuck taking cash. The device made him feel old and guilty. Old because he didn’t understand how to work it. Guilty because Amy was a single mom and couldn’t afford the expense. And because he’d been unable to reciprocate, even though he’d promised to buy his granddaughter, Mikaya, a new bike.
Some Santa I turned out to be. But if I could make five sales today—just five lousy sales…
He had a Huffy on layaway at Target. Jackie Kennedy pink. Sure, it would be a few days late, but Mikaya couldn’t ride a bike until spring anyway.
Just five lousy sales…
Don got the iPad working, finally, and set it on the table in its stand. He watched the movie run through once. It really was the cleanest copy of the Zapruder film one could buy. Well, in Dealey Plaza at least. Really vibrant color. You could see the crowd clapping for the motorcade. The little girl skipping, waving to the president. The death car passing behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, the top of Jack’s head popping off, all in high-def and slow motion, computer-stabilized to reduce jitter. Worth ten bucks easy.
“So what’s your theory? Can you tell me?” A handsome southern dowager had appeared at Don’s elbow. She sported a new perm, gold earrings, and an enamel brooch in the shape of a Maltese terrier.
“Of course!” Don gushed, enthusiastic even though “What’s your theory” was the second-most-asked question in Dealey Plaza, right behind “Where’s the nearest bathroom?” He took his mark—the manhole cover—and launched into his spiel, raising his voice to be heard over the whir of passing traffic.
“About a hundred feet up Elm here is where the president was shot. We put an ‘X’ in the street to designate the location.” The woman nodded, gravely but a little impatiently. Not a newbie. Good to know. “The Warren Commission claimed that Lee Oswald fired from that window. The sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But the House of Representatives opened up the case in the seventies and said that was wrong. You can see in this autopsy photo here that the bullet hit the president in the back. If Oswald was six floors up, it should have exited down. But they say the shot came out of his throat, out the front of his neck.” He pointed. “His neck is way up here, so the bullet would’ve had to have curved up. The autopsy report didn’t show it that way, and for that reason the shot couldn’t have come from above and behind.”
“So what’s your theory?” the woman repeated. A few other tourists approached, listening in.
“W-well…” Don stuttered a little. Damn. He still got stage fright, even after thirty years. “A-as you can see from this excellent copy of the Zapruder film, the president is actually knocked backwards by the force of the shot.”
“Back and to the left,” said the woman, nodding.
“Back and to the left. And ninety-five percent of the brain matter from the head shot was found in the area behind the limo—there across the street.”
“You mean the Harper fragment,” said a kid with a bushy hipster beard and ball cap, in a tone of condescension.
Oh, jeez. There’s one in every crowd. The boy’s cap bore an image of a wolf howling at the moon. Don smelled a pissing contest about to start.
“The Harper fragment,” said Don, nodding. “Found by—”
“Bill Harper,” said the hipster.
“Billy Harper,” said Don. “It was parietal bone, which is from—”
“The back of the head.”
“The back of the head. As I was saying, in the autopsy photos—”
“Those photos are faked,” said the hipster. “That’s clearly a matte insert.”
“That’s one theory,” said Don.
“You should read David Lifton.”
“I have.”
“So totally fake. That’s no bullet hole in his back. That’s a blood clot. Why are you fooling these people? That’s disinformation.” The hipster pointed a finger at Don’s chest, his eyes narrowing. “Who are you working for?”
The dowager raised a hand. “My father knew Jack Ruby. He worked at the Dallas Times Herald in the composing department. Ruby used to come in and look at the mock-ups for his ads. You know, for the Carousel Club?”
The hipster nodded. “Ruby ran guns to Cuba. Look into Operation Mongoose.”
A young woman bounded up to the group. “So what’s your theory? Can you tell me?”
“Of course!” Don gushed. “Uh—”
“If I’m not interrupting?” The girl looked sheepish. She was pretty, her brown hair tied back with an orange scrunchie. She carried a steaming Dunkin’ Donuts cup, and her green fingernails sparkled with glitter polish. She’d caught the attention of the hipster, thankfully, and he’d turned his wolf in her direction.
“No problem,” said the hipster.
“No problem!” said Don. “I—I can start over.”
Th
e dowager raised a hand. “And my cousin Bill was friends with Officer Tippit.”
“Who?” said the newcomer. “I’m from Canada. I don’t know aboot your history much.”
Don nodded, trying to find his place. “After the killing, they say, uh, Oswald shot a police officer in Oak Cliff.”
The hipster moved in on the girl. “That was part of the frame job. I can tell you all about it.”
“But Tippit was no innocent,” said the dowager, sagely. “My cousin says he was up to all sorts of things with the Mafia.”
“What year was Kennedy shot?” asked the girl, sipping her coffee.
“Nineteen sixty-three,” blurted the others, in unison, as if competing on a game show.
“And that was here? From the window?”
“According to the official report,” said Don.
“He was really shot from the grassy knoll,” said the hipster.
She blinked. “The what?”
“The knoll is where we’re standing,” said Don. “It’s this little hill. And according to many eyewitnesses the real shooter was up there, at the top, behind that fence.”
“Badge Man,” said the hipster, smugly. “You can see him in the Moorman photo. He was dressed as a cop.”
“Is that the same fence?” asked the girl, excited.
Don shook his head. “The pickets have been replaced seventeen times.”
Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy Page 2