In the Seventh-Day Adventist world I grew up in, conspiracy theories flourished.
I find them rare in Jewish life.
People who feel in charge of their lives are much less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Happy people don’t.
Here’s an article on conspiracy theories about Osama: Robert Alan Goldberg, a history professor at the University of Utah and the author of “Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America,” explains:
“Eighty percent of Americans, he said, believe that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, rather than a lone gunman, as a government commission affirmed. Thirty percent believe the government covered up aliens’ landing in Roswell, N.M., and a third of American blacks believe that government scientists created AIDS as a weapon of black genocide.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES REPORTS:
Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall says he likes to encourage people to think with his statements on Twitter — but who knows what they’re thinking after his controversial tweets concerning the death of Osama bin Laden.
One of Mendenhall’s tweets from Monday read: “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”
He also commented on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: “We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”
FROM WIKIPEDIA: In Washington, D.C., The Plan is a conspiracy theory regarding control of the city. Theorists insist that whites (Caucasians) have had a plan to “take back” the city since the beginning of home rule in the 1970s, when the city started electing blacks (African-Americans) to local offices.[1][2] The “age-old” theory enjoys considerable, if quiet, support.[3]
Daniel Pipes writes: Conspiracy theories – the fear of nonexistent conspiracies – are flourishing in the United States. Republican, Democratic, and independent presidential candidates espouse them. Growing political institutions (the Nation of Islam, the militias) are premised on them. A majority of Americans say they believe John F. Kennedy was killed not by a lone gunman but by a conspiracy, and a majority of black Americans hold the U.S. government responsible for the spread of drugs. O. J. Simpson famously beat his criminal rap by convincing a jury of a conspiracy theory: that the Los Angeles police framed him. Two young men, their heads spinning with conspiracy theories about Washington taking freedoms away from Americans, blew up a government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 (including 19 children) and wounding 550.
