When you write about conspiracy theorists, it helps to avoid the temptation to only “correct, instruct and condemn” them for their beliefs, as academics Peter Knight and Alasdair Spark noted nearly 15 years ago. Otherwise, Knight and Spark warned, however interesting your research and arguments, your book can become a tedious exercise in debunking claims that your audience of general readers likely already views with skepticism.
A new book on the growth and popularity of conspiracy theories, Among the Truthers, manages to avoid this pitfall. The author of the book, Jonathan Kay of Canada’s National Post newspaper, states upfront that the goal of the book “is not intended as a rebuttal to conspiracists.” (I should share that I once worked with Jonathan at the National Post.)
Rather, the book takes the reader through an odyssey of contemporary conspiracy theories, drawn from both the right and the left, and wrestles skillfully and perceptively with the all-important question of why these theories are so popular in the United States at this point in history.
To paraphase a former mayor of Boston, Samuel Abbott Green, who combatted some 19th century conspiracy theories, such theories seem to be almost like planets that defy all laws of gravity and follow their own orbits, easily resisting any and all efforts to halt their circulation.
As if responding to the warning from Knight and Spark, Kay is careful to assure the reader that this book is not just another exercise in bashing conspiracy theorists like piñatas. As he writes in the introduction, “like many of the Truthers who emailed me, I, too, have a weakness for narrow, geeky pursuits – tabletop war games, chess problems, sports statistics, Internet flame wars…In other words, I know what it is like to become enmeshed in all-consuming intellectual exercises that the people around you cannot understand – and perhaps even disdain.”
Thanks to his background as a journalist, Jonathan Kay brings a methodical, common sense approach to answering the “why” question that is lacking in many of what we might call the “standard” volumes that analyze conspiracy theories.
There are, however, some sections (but only a few) in Among the Truthers where a focus on the more practical consequences for US political culture of conspiracy theories being so popular would have benefitted the book.
In this respect, I think Among the Truthers would be a stronger book in some ways if Kay had drawn more from law professor Mark Fenster’s writings on conspiracy theories, their enduring appeal and the political populism that helps fuel their appeal. (See Fenster’s take on the “birthers” controversy here, for example.)
I would love to see Fenster and Kay debate, in person or in print, some of the points raised in Among the Truthers. The two would have much to discuss.
These minor concerns aside, Jonathan Kay has written a very interesting, very timely book that this reviewer hopes will receive wide attention.
