US SECRET POLICE EPISODES

[Chris Beggy]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> 
> At 10:48 AM 6/11/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
> >More specifically, this thread is on secret police in the U.S. and  the
> idea is that it was elite U.S.secret police operations that assassinated
> the Kennedys  It was a coup d'etat by one part of the ruling class against
> -- snip
> 
-- snip
> The popular demand for these stories has similar origins as demand for
> religion, personal god and similar crap - anthropomorphization of natural
> or social forces, which provides an illusion of an explanation to minds
> untrained in critical thought.
> 

Daniel Pipes keeps to a pretty narrow definition of conspiracism:
a phenomenon of unreasonable fear of secret groups, governments, and
Jews, which arose in the West around the time of the French Revolution
and continues to this day.

Religion, notions of a personal god, etc. seem to me to include ritual
and
ethics, as well faith.  Conspiracism seems to have just faith, and a
dark, pessimistic one at that.

Chris