"How can we explain our present situation unless we believe that the men at the top of this government are concerting to lead us to disaster?" US Senator McCarthy, June 1951What an obvious choice to not trust strangers. What an obvious choice, to not trust anyone who tells you they want to help you. What an obvious choice not to believe the “official story”. Why? There are other possibilities. Other answers, other people telling you a different story. It is a manifestation of your freedom to choose what you believe. Maybe you are right, there could be something "fishy", maybe the government is really plotting against you. There are many examples in history where this happened: Watergate, Prism Program, Project MKUltra or The Tuskegee Experiment. But what do they have in common? This is the beginning of a conspiracy. What does it entail? What is the goal of the people who create them? Given the chance to speak to Gareth Evans, a former Australian minister, I was given the chance to see things from a different perspective. Theories that shaped the world? Conspiracy theories have been around since the dawn of time. Despite their rarity, they are rarely defined. This is a diverse group of theories, ranging from the explanation of capitalism to the theory of why using toothpaste is bad for your health. They have their origin in religion (Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism), ideology (communism, fascism) or simply any other theory. things like a car accident. We can say that the only common thing in their origin is that they are a “product of an angry mind”. What does it mean? Hoffstader in his thesis Paranoid Style of American Politics states that conspiracy theorists believe in "a vast, insidious, extraordinarily effective internationalization... half of the paper... 7. 8. 9.1. Kennedy2. Anita Hill .083. Aids Govlab .22** .28**4 Aids-Gay .11 .24* .69*5. 24** .15* .21* .19 .117. FBI-King .27** .27* .35* . 33** .42** .16*8. * .31** .32** .17** .34**9 Japanese echo .07 .29** .20** .23** .22* . 03 .24** .17**10. Drugs-Gov .08 .34** .52** .54** .56** .19** .44** .29** .29**N of cases: 348 One-tailed significance: * < .01, ** < .001Appendix n.3Table three Mean scores of racial/ethnic groups on the attitude scalesWhite Hispanic BlackScaleBelief in conspiracies 2.5 2.8 3.3Anomia 3.4 3.8 4.1Trust 3.7 3.3 3.1Note: all scales ranged from 1 to 5, with 3 as the neutral point.