Conspiracy Theories (Pocket Essential series)

164 Pages·2006·5.9 MB·English

by  Robin Ramsay

Other Pocket Essentials by the same author:
The Rise of New Labour
Who Shot JFK?

Conspiracy Theories
ROBIN RAMSAY
POCKET ESSENTIALS
This edition published in 2006 by Pocket Essentials
P.O.Box 394,Harpenden,Herts,AL5 1XJ
www.pocketessentials.com
Reprinted 2007
© Robin Ramsay 2006
The right of Robin Ramsay to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced,stored
in or introduced into a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form
or by any means (electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or
otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 904048 65 X
EAN 978 1 904048 65 7
468109753
Typeset by Avocet Typeset,Chilton,Aylesbury,Bucks
Printed and bound by J.H.Haynes & Co Ltd,Sparkford
Contents
1 The World Is Not Like That 7
The World is Not Like That;Conspiracy is Normal Politics;One of
those No-Weatherman-Required Situations
2 I Am Paranoid but Am I Paranoid
Enough? 35
Paranoia and the Paranormal
3 From Blue Skies to Dark Skies 53
4 I Can’t See Them But I Know They Are There 67
Why the Right?;The EU;Uncle Sam Needs Us;BAP;The Official
Conspiracy Theory
5 It’s the State,Dummy 93
Teaching Aliens to Line-dance;Mind Control;David Icke
6 Disinformation 111
Disinformation about UFOs
7 Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracies 124
A Conspiracy Culture?;Concluding Comments
8 Index 153
• 5 •

The World is Not Like That
The conspiracy theory boom of the last few years shows no
sign of abating.Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code,20 million
copies sold world-wide, which four million people have
read in the UK,has ensured that.The fact that a novel about
a conspiracy theory,involving a group which doesn’t exist,
could generate so much heat is another sign of conspiracy
theories creeping into the mainstream.Even Polly Toynbee
in The Guardian felt obliged to warn us of the pernicious
nature of conspiracy theories. I agree with her: they are
pernicious.Or,rather,to anticipate one of my arguments
below, some of them are. The all-encompassing variety
which offer to explain great chunks of history and politics
by the secret machinations of small groups – the Jews,the
Masons etc. – are pernicious. Before Dan Brown’s naff
novel it was the events of 9/11/2001 which gave birth to
a great reef of theories in cyberspace; before that The X-
Filesin the mid 1990s boosted the number and visibility of
conspiracy theories in popular culture.These are the major
landmarks in the development of the ‘conspiracy culture’
and two of the three are fiction.
This ‘culture’s’ distinguishing characteristic is the ten-
dency to assume either that the deaths of all celebrities and
all major geopolitical events are the result of conspiracies,
or that all such events might be conspiracies.
• 7 •
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Take the death of Princess Diana.The motives of those
chiefly involved in the conspiracy theorising were mixed.
The main impetus behind this undoubtedly came from Dodi
Fayed’s father,Mohammed El Fayed,and is perhaps under-
standable as the reaction of a grieving parent,with several
hundred million pounds to spend,who has suddenly lost his
son and his son’s extremely glamorous girlfriend in a one-
car crash.Encouraging Fayed’s beliefs were some of the fol-
lowers of Lyndon LaRouche Jr, a strange American
conspiracy theorist whom I discuss below,who sees the evil
hand of the British Royal family behind much of the world’s
troubles. For LaRouche’s followers it is axiomatic that the
British Royals killed Di.Conspiracy theorists seized on the
words of Richard Tomlinson, the former MI6 officer who
told the world of a British intelligence plan to kill the
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a tunnel,using a bright
light to disorientate the driver of his car.(One witness from
Paris had reported seeing a flash just before Di’s car
crashed.) Recently the former MI5 officer Annie Machon
has stated that she and her partner, David Shayler, suspect
MI6’s involvement (although they offer no evidence).1The
driver of the car,Henri Paul,has been discovered to have re-
ceived large amounts of unaccountable money and is sus-
pected of being in the pay of MI62; and the photographer
James Andanson,the suspected driver of the white Fiat car,
which was seen near the incident,has died a bizarre death.3
Although the major media are no longer pursuing the
story, there are still many Internet sites discussing her
death and the ‘no conspiracy’ verdict reached by the
French legal inquiry and the ‘no conspiracy’verdict we will
• 8 •