Conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theories are a belief that a covert and deceptive organization or people is responsible for important world events, and that these people are hiding their own involvement, acting from behind the scenes and spreading misinformation. Usually, the term is used pejoratively, to denote irrational, paranoid and empirically unsupported beliefs that purport to describe world events through all-powerful unseen agents. These beliefs often fall foul of Occam's Razor, are unfalsifiable, often illogical, based on political presuppositions (often of an extreme kind: racist or anti-semitic). They also often tend towards being amorphous and all-encompassing, explaining absolutely everything. Those within political movements (of all stripes) which conspiracy theorists ally themselves with are often keen to distance themselves from conspiracism.

Conspiracy theories are often dominated by secret societies and groups: the Jews, international bankers, Masons, the supposed New World Order, fraternal groups like Yale University's Skull and Bones society, the Roman Catholic Church (or groups within the Church like the Jesuits or Opus Dei), the Knights of the Templars, the Bilderberger Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, leaders of the nations in the European Union, Satanists, the medical, psychiatric or legal professions, among many others. These groups are said to use power in all forms, dominating all institutions in society: schools and universities, the government, churches and religious institutions, the media, business and the military. These conspirers are said to operate in ruthless ways: playing ideologies and countries off one another, masking their true intent behind multiple layers of facade, and hiding their secrets both far out-of-sight in their eerie catacombs and secret crypts, and in plain sight in their public-facing symbols and the naïve dismissal of ordinary people.

The American historian Richard Hofstadter was one of the earliest to have discussed conspiracy theory as a specifically American phenomenon. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Hofstadter describes a "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" of otherwise ordinary people that can be traced from fears about the Illuminati and the Freemasons at the turn of the nineteenth century to fears of the Jesuits and Catholics in general, to income tax denialism and finally to McCarthyism. This enemy of freedom operates ahistorically and callously: "Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone's will."

List of conspiracy theories

 * the control of the entire world by a New World Order, a "shadow government". Many believe that the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is due to the New World Order.
 * that the U.S. Government (or, indeed, the New World Order) is behind false flag operations - operations conducted covertly to give the appearance of being conducted by some other group. The World Trade Center attacks in both 1993 and 2001 have been blamed by conspiracy theorists on the FBI and the Bush administration respectively. The train bombings in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005 have been blamed on a variety of groups other than Islamic terrorists including the government, intelligence services operatives and, in the case of Madrid, ETA, the Basque separatist group.
 * the idea that John F. Kennedy was killed by a shadowy cabal rather than by Lee Harvey Oswald
 * some claim that U.S. President Bill Clinton's Deputy White House Counsel, Vince Foster was killed by Clinton, along with other of Clinton's opponents and those who got in the way of Clinton's career
 * governments and the medical profession are often implicated in alleged conspiracy theories for creating, or suppressing cures for, diseases like cancer and AIDS.
 * some public health interventions have been seen as attempts at a conspiratorial form of lifestyle regulation or even mind control - including flouridation of drinking water supplies, vaccination of infants and responses to widespread transmission of HIV
 * during the 1980s and early 1990s, the accusation of Satanic ritual abuse
 * the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
 * that governments have been active in covering up alien visitations, like the events at Roswell and the things hidden at Area 51
 * that Diana Spencer and Dodi Al Fayed were murdered by the British Royal Family rather than getting into an accident
 * RFID and other technological innovations are secretly part of a plan to track and control people
 * the world is run by shape-shifting reptilians (see David Icke)
 * the United Nations is a secret socialist plot to destroy American freedom

Psychological and sociological research
In 1994, Ted Goertzel published research in the journal Political Psychology where he surveyed 348 New Jersey residents and found that most believe in at least ten conspiracy theories. He also stated that belief in conspiracy theory correlates with anomia, lack of interpersonal trust and insecurity about employment. The research also looked at a variety of other factors and found that blacks and Hispanics were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and younger people were slightly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Other factors including gender, education level and occupation had little correlation of any significance.