Architects of Fear

by George Johnson

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874772753
• ISBN13: 9780874772753
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: Tarcher
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Relativism, Internal Growth & Its Attack From Absolutism

I give this book 10 stars. The reason is that it's application applies to current events and would be beneficial to the public and law makers if they had comprehension of the history of conspiracy theories, how it has affected political control and destiny of Western civilization and how it pertains to religion and it's progenitors absolutist and relative thinking. This is a history book which concepts play a dominant role in our contemporary society and political climate in the United States and through out the entire world, as fundamentalist and religious thinking, both affect our world conditions. Absolutist thinking can pertain to any realm and basically rests in conservativism which seeks to conserve or retain traditions and current cultural values, as in orthodoxy, rejecting all other avenues that deviate as heresy. Such is the basis for conspiracy accusations. Johnson, in a nonexhaustive study, relates the historical development of the ancient Greek Pythagoreans, the Euclidean's, and the later Rosicrucian's, the Freemasons and the Illuminati. While such groups had differed in many ways and had even battled each other, they all consisted of a common thread: the idea to grow in knowledge and understanding apart from the orthodoxy of conservatism and traditional thought. And so they have always posed as threats to traditional religious and political thinking and subsequently were responsible for uprisings and revolutions, most commonly noted in the French revolution. Such groups were the precursors to the Enlightenment and the departure from the religious control that dominated Europe. Later groups under the attack of conspiracy theories were the opposers of the Catholic Church, to the Catholic Church herself, to the Communists, Bankers and Jews, the list goes on. Co-joining these movements throughout history, and its heretical thinking, was that of the attacks and accusations from the traditionalists, the conservatives accusing, constructing and elaborating on conspiracy theories. Many of these theories were elaborated on in such ways to criss-cross each other, changing in ways that accuse multiple groups, which others take in only some of these groups, changing accusational applications and formulations to fit the preconceived ideas of the accuser. Many of the schemes became so elaborate - without evidence, and yet whipped up the masses in persecution fervor. Such can be seen in the history of the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the United States Joseph McCarthy trials of so-called Communists, which some were. But the idea of being a Communist was now accused as being dangerous and detrimental to our current values. Johnson goes into the history of American politics, the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians or Federalists and their supporters the Congregationalists and our current day Right Wing conservative values and subsequent attacks on all view that differ from their absolutist mentality, thus using conspiratory theories of attack.

Splendid and indispensable

I agree with the LA Times: "Splendid and indispensable, endlessly interesting, sheer entertainment, a titillating glimpse intoyahooland."