Conspiracies (real ones) have always existed. Yet, conspiracy theories (often imaginary) appeared, during the French Revolution: their coming lines up with the end of monarchy and the secularization of our society. The Illuminati, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Society of Jesus, Freemasonry, Rite of Strict Observance etc... created polemics, amalgams. Nowadays: Opus Dei, Illuminati or Scientology feed some newspaper where popular phantasmagoria goes beyond reality.
Jérôme Rousse-Lacordaire (Dominican), Jean-Pierre Laurant (founder of the Politica Hermetica, ex Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) and Emmanuel Kreis (historian, doctoral student EPHE et author CNRS) give us a large panorama of these theories.
All Conspiracy theories state "that nothing happens by chance, everything is linked". They are a secularized and demonized form of Providence and are presented like an alternative historical construction that reinterprets whole pieces of our history. They see the running of our societies as a result of the carrying out of a project secretly orchestrated by groups of men powerful and unscrupulous.
- Are these theories the consequences of an emotional clash linked to historical events? - Are we in presence of a collective unconsciousness? - Who takes advantage of these polemics? If we consider essayists like Augustin Barruel or Léo Taxil: for whom did they work? And did they even know? - is history really led by small groups of men, initiated and keen on esotericism?
Nowadays: - what do we have to think of a politician who uses these conspiracy theories, presenting himself as a "bulwark to the conspiracy", since history proves us that these actions were the prerogative of the greatest dictators?
- in our time characterized by a low intellectual commitment, political or spiritual, is the word "conspiracy" associated to the word "communitarianism"? Did a substitution occur? Think about it in this 100 minutes debate.
Conspiracies (real ones) have always existed. Yet, conspiracy theories (often imaginary) appeared, during the French Revolution: their coming lines up with the end of monarchy and the secularization of our society.
