Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
    Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
    Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
    Audiobook14 hours

    Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

    Written by David Aaronovitch

    Narrated by James Langton

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere-from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism we live in, the role of conspiracy is a serious one-one that can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence.

    For award-winning journalist David Aaronovitch, there came a time when he started to see a pattern among these inflammatory theories. He found that these theories used similarly murky methods with which to insinuate their claims: they linked themselves to the supposed conspiracies of the past ("it happened then so it can happen now"); they carefully manipulated their evidence to hide its holes; and they relied on the authority of dubious academic sources. Most important, they elevated their believers to membership of an elite-a group of people able to see beyond lies to a higher reality. But why believe something that entails stretching the bounds of probability so far? Surely it is more likely that men did actually land on the moon in 1969 than that thousands of people were enlisted to fabricate an elaborate hoax.

    In this entertaining and enlightening book-aimed at providing ammunition for those who have found themselves at the wrong end of a conversation about moon landings or the twin towers-Aaronovitch carefully probes and explodes a dozen of the major conspiracy theories. In doing so, he examines why people believe them and makes an argument for a true skepticism-one based on a thorough knowledge of history and a strong dose of common sense.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 3, 2010
    ISBN9781400185924
    Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

    Related to Voodoo Histories

    Related audiobooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Explaining the Donald

      May 19, 2022

      The Magical and Occult Roots of Political Power John Michael Greer Inner Traditions 2021 Pb, 201pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781644112588 Donald Trump may be the ultimate anomalous phenomenon – at least for our age. How did an elderly American real estate and e

      8 min read

    • Article

      Making Sense Of Conspiracy Theorists As The World Gets More Bizarre

      Apr 11, 2021

      In 1999 I sat in a Vancouver café with a group of anti-capitalist activists. They’d just returned from protesting the WTO in Seattle to find a new, far stranger foe in town – David Icke. He was there to lecture about how the ruling elite are actually

      8 min read

    • Article

      Building A Fortean Library

      Dec 3, 2020

      It wasn’t just the Beatles, you know. On Merseyside in the 1960s another group of irreverent young men coalesced around an iconoclastic idea, and with rather more intellectual heft than the admittedly slightly better-known, and better-earning, moptop

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Feb 25, 2021

      It’s a characteristic of classic conspiracy theories that certain elements of them can be recycled to fit new theories as they arise: think crisis actors, baby-eating Satanists, or FEMA coffififin stores. One could say they are perennial tropes of th

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Aug 10, 2023

      The Conspirasphere
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Sep 9, 2021

      The Conspirasphere
      6 min read

    • Article

      Theories Of Conspiracy Theories

      Jun 16, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Modern Myths, Conspiracy Theories and Pseudo-History Ronald H Fritze Reaktion Books 2022 Hb, 272pp, £20, ISBN 9781789145397 There has been growing interest in recent

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Oct 7, 2021

      The vexed issue of anti-Semitism has haunted the Conspirasphere for an unconscionably long time. It’s an issue I have found hard to reconcile and engage with as I have trawled through the history and ecology of conspiracy theory; perhaps because so l

      3 min read

    • Article

      Visions Of the Future

      Sep 7, 2023

      Visions Of the Future
      8 min read

    • Article

      Taking The Future As Read

      Jan 27, 2022

      Taking The Future As Read
      10 min read

    • Article

      How New Gods Are Made

      Mar 24, 2022

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine Anna Della Subin Granta Books 2022 Hb, £20, 460pp, ISBN 9781783785018 Many of the subjects of this delightfully curious book had no

      11 min read

    • Article

      Out There

      Apr 21, 2022

      Out There
      14 min read

    • Article

      Liberace With Attitude

      Apr 20, 2023

      Carl Abrahamsson Inner Traditions 2022 Pb, 424pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781644112410 Given the scope of available candidates for the title of Devil incarnate, one finds it difficult to imagine that Anton LaVey would even get a look in! LaVey was born in Chic

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Machine So Odious | Books

      Nov 22, 2019

      In the course of reading Edward Snowden's autobiography Permanent Record, I came across a striking passage which I shared with a friend on WhatsApp. A few hours later when I visited YouTube, the first recommended video that popped up on my screen was

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Apr 20, 2023

      As US journalist HL Mencken once famously opined, “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the population alarmed (and thus clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with a whole series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Our Henry woul

      3 min read

    • Article

      Real Lies

      Jul 18, 2018

      Real Lies
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Vanishing of Reality

      Aug 1, 2018

      The Vanishing of Reality
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Conspirasphere

      Aug 11, 2022

      The bomb attack on the Georgia Guidestones (see p4-5), and their subsequent demolition, got a lot of coverage, briefly. In the immediate aftermath, there were a lot of posts approving of the action, and a certain amount of speculation as to who might

      3 min read

    • Article

      UFO Films And UFO Flaps

      Feb 24, 2022

      The interaction and influence of the media on how UFOs are reported and experienced is a cornerstone of the psychosocial hypothesis (PSH; see FT400:52-53) to explaining the belief in extraterrestrial UFO invaders. Martin Kottmeyer, in the pages of Ma

      4 min read

    • Article

      UFO Films And UFO Flaps

      Feb 24, 2022

      The interaction and influence of the media on how UFOs are reported and experienced is a cornerstone of the psychosocial hypothesis (PSH; see FT400:52-53) to explaining the belief in extraterrestrial UFO invaders. Martin Kottmeyer, in the pages of Ma

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ufology: Behind The Curve?

      Apr 20, 2023

      In the late 1980s the interest in alien abductions reached its peak, and the scholarly two-volume UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery by folklorist Thomas Bullard inflamed a debate between those who regarded abductions as real events and those w

      3 min read

    • Article

      Past Made Present: On Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s ‘Photostats’

      Nov 23, 2020

      I’m wondering, when will there be an intervention, a disruption, a reckoning with the current trajectory we’ve taken? Perhaps it begins with the 2020 elections and becomes something we enact daily. The post Past Made Present: On Felix Gonzalez-Torres

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Voodoo Histories

    4/5

    25 ratings23 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Excellent book. I read a lot of books about the history and psychology of conspiracy theories and this book added some new ideas and theories I had not heard before. The book was sometimes hard for me to follow as it was not organized in chronological order, but this was not a major issue. My only complaint is that the narrator attempted to use accents and a feminine voice for people from other countries and women respectively. Unfortunately all his accents sounded the same and his woman voice was unintentionally hilarious. This was distracting.
    • 4/5
      Starts with the common characteristics of conspiracy theories. covers: Protocols of the Elders of Zion, McCarthy's Red Scare, JFK's assassination, Marilyn Monroe's death, Bill Clinton's Arkansas days, Bush and 9/11, Diana's accident, as well as others. The Round Robin of rotating citations of questionable references and resources. Downright comical evidence.
    • 5/5
      This was an interesting insight into the mindset of the average conspiracy theorist, interwoven into explanations and debunkings of influential western conspiracies. I enjoyed the read, and took a lot of useful insight from it, though it was plain to see that Aaronovitch got a bit too caught up in researching various conspiracies - he could have spent more time explicitly discussing the differences between each theory and building on his profile of a theories, where instead each chapter stands fairly distinct from the others.
    • 4/5
      Not bad, certainly, but suffering from a sort of identity crisis. The book tries bot to look at conspiracy theories and theorist dispassionately--as a sociological phenomenon--and also to disprove them. For various reasons--space for one--these two goals can't both be accomplished, and so we are somewhat disappointed on both counts. There are, though, good insights on both counts and lots of interesting stories and funny, snarky asides.
    • 2/5
      Disappointing. The author had a few good points, "Jews control the World" type conspiracies lead to the possibility for Hitler to be able to take over in Germany, and "There's a secret Communist Conspiracy to rule the world" lead to the Red Scare of McCarthyism, lead by a politician who likely would have lost at the polls due to he being a do nothing, worth nothing, who was in the wrong political party after Wisconsin had a shift left. However, most of the book wasn't actually about history but about how Aaronovitch thinks conspiracies are dumb, because its too far from Occam's razor. He would ridicule conspiracy theorists for believing in ideas that had "facts" to back it up, but nothing verifiable, and then do the same thing himself in his short attempt to debunk it. Rarely actually examining any of the true "facts" the conspiracists claimed to rely on. He tried to run through the book in a history (over the last 150 years) of various conspiracies, and as he had a British perspective the point of reference was off for me. I wanted to put the book down far before I did but I kept hoping he'd get to a point and it would make sense. For the most part it was in linear order, with the exception of 9/11. He covered this in the 8th chapter of a 9 chapter book, and in the 9th went backwards to Bill Clinton. I suspect that his editor that as I did, that many folks would be bored by the 8th chapter and have become interested in conspiracys after exporse of the "9/11 Truth" movement. I also found it odd that on that subject he cited poor excuses for "Truth" like the Scholors for 9/11 Truth, including a reference to having "only one engineer" instead of looking at the far more popular AE911 (architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth, of which I signed on as a member at one time, FYI, I'm an engineer). Now, I am not going to claim, as others may, that Aaronovitch is part of a conspiracy to make conspiracy theorists look wack-o (I assure you they do that well enough on their own). In the epilogue there were a few other good insights about conspiracies being a deeper issue. The poem of the soul, showing a deeper truth about a real issue that bothers people and they feel the need for an explanation. Like my review of "Why does a nice guy like me keep getting thrown in Jail?" lead me to add one of his references "The Nazi Persecution of the churches" by Conway to my book queue as likely closer to what I was wanting, similarly the epilogue to this lead me to add "Conspiracy Theories" by Ramsay for a look a look at the idea form a broader perspective. I try that later, in the mean time if you are looking for an objective view on something of this subject I recommend "Them" by Ronson as an alternative.
    • 4/5
      I felt on reading that this book attempted to do one thing and did another. It felt as though the author intended to write an overarching view of conspiracies, how they're not just silly beliefs but have real consequences, and examine why people believe them. What he actually happened was he often became mired down in debunking the theory and loses track of the overall message. He does manage to draw up an overall idea but the book could have been cut down to make to more concise. Also, I felt a few times that he was getting a little personal about certain conspiracy theorists, exploring a few of their backgrounds to show how the beliefe can come from experience and how people become invested in theories is one thing, the biography of everyone who attened a certain meeting I can't now remember the name of and I never really established the importance of wasn't.
    • 3/5
      Of course, it's only a conspiracy theory until it's proven true. For example the US government never admitted to helping Israel attack Natanz nuclear enrichment plant. Independent researchers investigated it and now everyone accepts the truth but the government still denies it.
    • 4/5
      Conspiracy theory debunking from a left-wing perspective. Some content is targeted more toward the British public. Tries a little too hard to make victims out of the Clintons.
    • 5/5
      Really enjoyed this one. Aaronovitch packs a lot of details and research into this book, but it's necessary when he's skewering some of the greatest conspiracy theories of the last 100 years or so.

      I picked this one up because I really am one of those people who roll their eyes at the multiple killer theories for JFK, RFK and Marilyn Monroe. I smile indulgently at those that believe Obama was born in Kenya and that 9/11 was an inside job. Telling me the moon landing I watched when I was six years old was all faked will make me laugh.

      But I love a good story, so I gobble up movies like JFK and Capricorn One because, for me, it's as much how these people spin up the stories to try and make all the "facts" fit in their convoluted stories.

      In this book, the author carefully builds up each theory, citing names, sources, etc, then systematically tears each one back down again. And through it all, I could hear each conspiracy theorist screaming, "YOU FOOL! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!" like some ersatz Charlton Heston revealing that Soylent Green is people.

      Anyway, I was very much educated by this book while also being entertained by it. You really can't ask for more, can you?
    • 5/5
      Has the Roman Catholic Church conspired to hide the fact that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a baby? Was George Bush behind the attacks on 9/11? Did the CIA kill JFK? Did FDR know beforehand about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Is Barack Obama covering up his Kenyan birth? Obviously, for any sane individual, the answer to all of these questions is no. And yet millions of otherwise intelligent individuals buy into moronic conspiracy theories like these. Why? That's exactly the question that David Aaronovitch answers in this book. He also shows us why conspiracy theories are so dangerous: because fake history can change minds, influence events, and make real history. I highly recommend this book; don't be fooled!
    • 4/5
      This was fascinating. I'd never thought of conspiracy theories as shaping history; rather, they have always seem like weird fringe elements. Neat book.
    • 3/5
      With counter-knowledge being, seemingly, the flavour of the decade, its good to come across a book that resoundingly debunks theories which are seriously considered even by some intelligent people as well as exposing many blatant hoaxes which are accepted as historical fact. Both the Priory of Sion and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are relatively recent inventions, there was no magic bullet involved in Kennedy’s assassination, Roosevelt had no prior knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbour, Prince Phillip didn’t have Princess Diana assassinated, and Marilyn Monroe was not murdered – by Martin Luther King or anyone else. This is a must read.
    • 4/5
      Instead of the usual scientific debunking of conspiracy theories, this book examines the role of conspiracy theories in shaping history...not the role of conspiracies, but the way in which belief in certain conspiracies, though unsupported by evidence, shaped the public discourse and shaped history. I recommend it for anyone who has ever said what does it hurt if someone believes something a bit silly.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this a lot. I was initially a bit wary, his introduction and attempts at defining a 'conspiracy theory' were a little shaky imo. However, he's basically right in what he's driving at. I'm the choir to preach at, admittedly, because I rather hate conspiracy theories - one of my few principles, presumably from being a history graduate, is that I can't stand bad history. Conspiracy theories (without exception in the ones discussed here) are certainly that, almost always politically motivated and painting ones enemies as possessed of incredible powers being used for evil. The effect is to dehumanise the other side, which destroys rational assessment of them and can be catastrophic.Why people actually believe in such things is the nub - he doesn't quite nail it, but I don't think 'it' is quite there to be nailed. For each conspiracy the reasons will vary slightly. The similarities are huge though, as right-wing fantasies about Clinton and left-wing fantasies about George W. Bush in the US reveal. Conspiracies about the other side are always more believable (people who believe in one will find some way to quickly dismiss the other). There are shades of the apocalyptic in the theorists, and always the desire to be the 'one in the know', the exceptional one who sees beneath the reality everyone else is stupid enough to be fooled by. At one point Aaronovich quotes a character from Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (a brilliant novel), who is conjuring up a conspiracy theory about the Knights Templar because it strikes him as fun. "Tell them what you like and they'll believe it," he says, "as long as it's the exact opposite of what they were taught in school." Quite.
    • 3/5
      David Aaronovitch is the calm, rational person you wish were sitting next to you on a bus or a plane--you know, when there's a nut unloading convictions on you peppered with "they"s and the CIA and big business. But this book could use considerable editing and he doesn't make much of a case that conspiracy theorizing has altered history. The closest is the case of The Protocols of Zion. Seems to me, though, that, given the long illustrious history of anti-Semitism, if the Protocols didn't exist other rationales would have appeared.If you don't have much interest in the particular conspiracies he delved into at great length (notably the Princess Di death cover-up and the "history" behind the Da Vinci Code), the best chapters are the first and last. Aaronovitch has selflessly immersed himself in this muck and the actual adherents for years on end, so I bet he could have gone on at greater length. There's the notion that those on the losing side of history or popular sentiment can only believe they lost by some great underground conspiracy by dark powers. There's the surprising number of very well educated people that believe, say, that the US govt bombed the Twin Towers or that the British govt assassinated Princess D but they never have expertise in the thing they might be declaiming on. In the latter case, it's surprising how many different theories about the whys and wherefores there were (and still are, no doubt)--apparently many books!--and yet the govt was compelled to go to trial, expending millions of pounds, for a case that was so flimsy it was immediately dismissed by the judge. In this matter, Aaronvitch could have gone on more about the sorry state of the British press and the historical role of conspiracy spewing by newspapers. Why does so much of the British public need this crap? He claims that one tabloid, The Express, depended on Diana stories for survival. One of these Princess Diana books, btw, was by Nick Davies who is now leading the charge on Murdoch and phone tapping by his papers.Conspiracy theories, notably the 9/11 ones, often bring together people whose views are otherwise, ah, very divergent. Left-wing, right-wing, anti-Muslim, pro-Muslim, American haters, American lovers, mentally unhinged Scottish novelists. So there's the special amplifying impact of the internet.
    • 4/5
      An intelligent, well-researched book about conspiracies, their origins, what they mean, and why they matter. Aaranovich covers both the biggies (JFK, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and a few I'd never even heard of (the strange death of Marilyn Monroe, the murder of Hilda Murrell). He knows his material well, having a firm grasp on the various rhetorical gambits and logical fallacies that seem to reappear in almost every conspiracy theory. Presenting himself as a sincere advocate for rational, independent thought, he manages to keep his head about him as he patiently reviewing the available evidence about him without getting upset at these rather ridiculous theories' very existence. And some of these theories are truly ridiculous; there's plenty hear for anyone who's spent an afternoon surfing bizarre conspiracy Web sites just to laugh at them. The author's research also takes him to some genuinely interesting and unexpected places, a shadowy world of ideologically-motivated fraudsters and kooks that might as well be respectable history's seedy underbelly. If I've got a complaint about "Voodoo Histories," it's about its sequencing. While Aaranovich writes elegantly and includes bits of cogent analysis throughout this book, it isn't until its conclusion that he begins to elucidate why so many people find so conspiracy theories so attractive. While much of his analysis is spot-on, it probably should have come earlier. Without this context, some readers might mistake "Voodoo Histories" for a useful but but insufficiently incisive recounting of and rebuttal to some annoying persistent popular historical myths. It isn't until the final chapter of this book that Aaranovich really goes in for the kill: those who treat conspiracies as quirky "counternarrative" to official histories ignore the harm they do. The myths of the Third Reich, to use the most famous example, drew heavily from conspiracy theories and conspiracist logic. Although Aaranovich concedes that it's sometimes difficult to see the world with clear, reasonable eyes, he argues that the price of refusing to do so, of succumbing to sloppy, emotionally reassuring popular narratives, is just too high. I tend to think that after finishing "Voodoo Histories," many of his readers will be inclined to agree with him.
    • 5/5
      This was an interesting insight into the mindset of the average conspiracy theorist, interwoven into explanations and debunkings of influential western conspiracies. I enjoyed the read, and took a lot of useful insight from it, though it was plain to see that Aaronovitch got a bit too caught up in researching various conspiracies - he could have spent more time explicitly discussing the differences between each theory and building on his profile of a theories, where instead each chapter stands fairly distinct from the others.
    • 3/5
      In this book, the author analyzes various conspiracy theories.I have to admit that I found a good chunk of this book kind of dry. The chapters where I was most interested included: "Dead Deities", which investigated the deaths of JFK, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana; and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy Shit", which focused on the people who sued Dan Brown and their theories on the bloodline of Jesus Christ. A couple of other chapters were o.k. - the one on Barack Obama/Bill Clinton and the one on 9/11. But, the others were just boring and dry, so I couldn't focus and didn't necessarily want to be reading the book. Unfortunately, I just can't bring myself to even rate it "o.k.".
    • 5/5
      The last chapter of this book is the most important, where the author examines the reasons that conspiracy theories abound. It is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the phenomenon that I have read. The earlier chapters describe and debunk various conspiracies in modern Western Culture from the protocols of Zion to Obama's country of origin. I suspect that much of this material is there so that he hits on at least one conspiracy theory that a given reader would have believed (in my case the Nazi bombing of the Reichstag). Once we have our own conspiracy debunked, the question of how did we let this happen to us becomes more pressing, and I, at least, read on eagerly to the last chapter.
    • 4/5
      Instead of the usual scientific debunking of conspiracy theories, this book examines the role of conspiracy theories in shaping history...not the role of conspiracies, but the way in which belief in certain conspiracies, though unsupported by evidence, shaped the public discourse and shaped history. I recommend it for anyone who has ever said what does it hurt if someone believes something a bit silly.
    • 3/5
      Sadly, this was not the book I wanted to read, which would be a book about the seductive appeal of the conspiracy theory and how to distinguish plausible from implausible conspiracies. Instead, it’s a series of Western conspiracy theories that are wrong. Often they involve Jews. Aaronovitch is more detailed with respect to the more recent ones (Princess Diana, some incidents probably familiar to British readers but not to me, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, etc.) than the earlier ones, though I did learn the full history of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (they were not just made up, they were recycled made-up—plagiarized from accounts of another conspiracy). The most interesting thing I learned was probably that the current historical consensus is that the Reichstag Fire was not itself a Nazi plot, though it was exploited by the Nazis for advantage.But the book wasn’t satisfying because it wasn’t the book I wanted to read, the one that acknowledged that conspiracies do exist, but that they’re generally (1) small, (2) short-lived through betrayal, disagreement or other causes (though occasionally long-enough-lived to do their dirty work: Watergate; Iran/Contra; etc.), (3) often nongovernmental (Enron), and (4) protected by the difficulty of wading through available information and the interests that others have in not taking action (Madoff and the SEC). Aaronovitch makes the nice point that the “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary Clinton identified was in fact vast and right-wing, but that its major funder Scaife was quite open about what he wanted done to the Clintons. Is it a conspiracy if they tell you what they intend to do, like Republicans deciding to rebrand healthcare and adopt the same talking points in unison? Occam’s Razor inclines to incompetence over conspiracy, yes, but I would have liked more on how to deal with pervasive distrust in government without acceding to ridiculous conspiracy theories or ignoring bad things government has actually done.
    • 2/5
      Ocasionally interesting but a disappointment overall.
    • 5/5
      This was an extremely interesting and insightful read. Aaronovitch examines a multitude of conspiracy theories, their believers, and the effect these fringe ideas have on politics, history, and the general population. He focuses mostly on US and Britain, with some forays into Western Europe. He examines it all with a skeptical eye, which works for me, because when it comes to conspiracies I am a HUGE skeptic, but for those with a less skeptic mindset, he may be biased, in that he believes that very few conspiracies actually exist. For me, the most intriguing chapters were the ones on modern conspiracy theories, ie. during the Clinton years, the 9/11 Truth movement, and the Birthers. Aaronovitch examines conspiracy theories from both the right and the left; there is no partisan bias. What emerges is a portrait of a mindset where those on the extremes on both sides let their paranoia defeat their common sense, with results that are sometimes harmless, sometimes dangerous, whether to themselves or society as a whole. This is an important book and I highly recommend it. Four and a half stars.