A Culture of Conspiracy. Michael Barkun

science or history. By the late nineteenth century, secular millenarian visions had become closely linked with political ideologies, especially those that grew out of ideas about nationality, class, and race. Hence the twentieth century was both dominated and scarred by Marxism, Nazism, and a host of nationalisms, all of which promised a millennial consummation to some group judged to be particularly worthy. Like earlier religious millenarians, these secular ideologists linked the end-times with a great battle between the forces of good and evil—not a literal, biblical Armageddon, but a struggle of comparably cosmic importance.

      Thus, by the mid- to late twentieth century, millenarian beliefs could be conveniently classified in either of these two broad categories. To be sure, disagreements might arise. The more religiously inclined might question whether any secular beliefs not grounded in sacred texts could be considered millenarian. Millenarians in the West sometimes disputed the application of the label to non-Christian belief systems, especially those in the non-Western world, such as the cargo cults of Melanesia. (Members of these South Pacific island sects claimed to possess secret knowledge, allegedly hidden from them by Christian missionaries. They believed the manipulation of this knowledge would bring them a utopia of unlimited manufactured goods of the kind introduced by their colonizers.) Some secular millenarians, notably Marxists, resented the application to themselves of any term that might associate them with religionists. These objections, however, tended to originate from believers rather than scholars, most of whom have been willing to apply millenarian to both secular and religious manifestations far outside the term’s original Christian frame of reference.

      A tacit consensus thus developed, at least in academic quarters, about the idea of two streams of millenarian beliefs, one flowing from religious traditions and the other from secular thought. This division provided a handy classificatory schema, especially for Western history, which seemed to move from an age of religious struggles to one of ideological warfare. This simple schema, however, does not work well any longer.

      The reason has little to do with the relative health of religious and secular millennialism. Both have flourished. Although it was once believed that forces for secularization would inevitably marginalize religion, the last three or four decades of the twentieth century demonstrated the vitality of many religious traditions. This is particularly evident in the growth of fundamentalisms—religious movements that seek to restore what believers consider a pristine, uncorrupted tradition. Such movements are characterized by their emphasis on the literal reading of sacred texts and the drive to remold society in conformity with religious norms. Such movements—whether in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Islam—have demonstrated both rapid growth and the ability to mobilize to pursue political objectives. While not all fundamentalisms are millenarian, many, in their quest for doctrinal purity, give millenarian teachings a position of prominence.²

      Secular millennialism has been less vital, a product of what Daniel Bell famously referred to as “the end of ideology.” The great left-right battles that polarized Western politics for more than a century have largely died down. Whether the collapse of the Soviet empire was a cause or an effect of this process is a question beyond the scope of this inquiry. Nonetheless, the Soviet collapse seemed to some the definitive end of ideological battle, a point made in a triumphalist manner by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man. Samuel Huntington, who reacted somewhat differently, argues that the resurgence of religion as a polarizing force was the result of the diminished salience of ideology. In any case, in the hands of ideologues, Cold War battles developed a significant millenarian dimension, seeming to pit the forces of light (“the free world”) against the forces of darkness (“the evil empire”), with the prospect of nuclear Armageddon ahead.³

      While it may seem that ideology has died out in a post–Cold War world, islands of secular millennialism remain. They appear in the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in many parts of the world, notably the Balkans, the Caucasus, and South Asia. They also appear in the racist and xenophobic movements that are prominent in western and central Europe and, to a lesser degree, in North America. Finally, they emerge in some antiglobalization rhetoric, with its implied nostalgia for a lost golden age of small, self-sufficient communities. Thus it would be incorrect to say that the older millennialisms, whether religious or secular, have disappeared; both can be found in numerous vital forms. Nonetheless, they have been joined by a third variety, which I call the improvisational millenarian style.

      THE RISE OF IMPROVISATIONAL MILLENNIALISM

      The improvisational millenarian style is distinctive for its independence from any single ideological tradition. Its predecessors—the religious and secular styles—consisted of variations on or deviations from some well-defined set of ideas, whether grounded in sacred texts, political ideologies, or philosophical teachings. By contrast, the improvisational style is characterized by relentless and seemingly indiscriminate borrowing. For example, Shoko Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, drew not only on esoteric Buddhism but also on the New Testament Book of Revelation, Nostradamus, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Aum Shinrikyo was the Japanese religious organization whose members tried to set off an apocalyptic war by releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1993. In his indiscriminate combination of beliefs, Asahara was typical of contemporary millenarian entrepreneurs—by which I mean individuals who create apocalyptic belief systems outside of customary religious or secular traditions. In a similar vein, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, until 1999 the head of the Church Universal and Triumphant, combined Christianity with Theosophy, channeling, and conspiracy theory. Her Montana-based church, near Yellowstone National Park, built elaborate underground bomb shelters after Prophet became convinced that a Soviet nuclear attack was imminent. In 1990, hundreds of her followers took to the shelters, only to emerge eventually into the same world they had left.

      These idiosyncratic combinations highlight the improvisational style’s characteristic bricolage. Such odd conceptual structures are apt to contain elements from more than one religious tradition, together with ideas from the New Age, occultism, science, and radical politics. The combinations do not appear “natural,” since the elements often come from seemingly unrelated domains, such as conspiracy theories and fringe science, or from domains that appear to be in opposition, such as fundamentalist religion and the New Age. “New Age” is clearly the most recent constituent, and its very recency poses definitional problems. For present purposes, I employ J. Gordon Melton’s definition, which includes the following elements: mystical individual transformation; an awareness of new, nonmaterial realities; “the imposition of [a] personal vision onto society”; and belief in universally pervasive but invisible forms of energy.⁴

      The appeal of these collages lies in their claim to provide holistic and comprehensive pictures of the world. The variety of their elements implies that the belief system can explain a comparably wide range of phenomena, from the spiritual to the scientific and the political. The combinations also suggest that apparent oppositions and contradictions can be resolved, and that an underlying unity transcends outward differences.

      Such belief systems can flourish only in an environment in which two conditions are present. The first requirement is that a wide range of potential material—motifs that might be incorporated into a belief system—be easily accessible. The second is that existing authority structures be sufficiently weakened so that novel combinations of ideas can be proposed and taken seriously. The first condition, accessibility, has resulted from cultural exchanges now taken for granted, and from the communications infrastructure through which diverse messages move. New technologies and marketing devices have vastly increased the ease with which unusual and unpopular ideas may be spread. For print media, this has been facilitated by the ubiquitous availability of mass-market paperbacks through large bookstore chains, such as Borders and Barnes and Noble, and specialty stores catering to niche audiences such as evangelical Christians and New Age believers. Millenarian books have proved to be massive sellers—epitomized by the extraordinary success of the Left Behind series of millennialist novels by Tim La Haye and Jim Jenkins, which has sold more than fifty million copies. In addition, computer, photocopying, and other technologies have made possible the production of self-published print periodicals (zines) by individuals and groups who previously had no access to this medium.⁵

      But changes in electronic communication have been far more important. Cable television, including its