/lit/ - Literature

>>16739361
Depends on how you define conspiracy theory - there have always been suspicions about those in power that have developed into narratives capable of mobilizing masses of people. One could consider much of New Testament characterization of the Roman Empire as conspiratorial, especially Revelations. But, for popular conspiracies, there probably has been some kind of conspiracy ever since mass literacy. Pic related offers a fascinating history of the of the OGs of modern American conspiracy. You see this guy's thinking influencing everything from Qanon to contemporary Birchers. He definitely wasn't the first conspiratorial thinker in America, but he definitely popularized a myriad of previously unlinked paranoias and obsessions of American conspiracists. Cooper started out as a UFO truther I believe and somehow turned the popularity he got from that into a quasi-libertarian militia movement after Ruby Ridge and Waco