In Part I of this book, I described the history of conspiracism, and its changing face from the French Revolution to the post-9/11 era. In Part II, in which the focus narrowed from the sociological to the psychological, I analyzed the motives and belief systems of individual conspiracy theorists. My goal throughout was to show how conspiracism threatens the intellectual foundations of rationalism by eroding the baseline presumption that we all inhabit the same reality.
In the next three chapters, I will analyze why rationalism has given way to conspiracism so readily—even in the face of a trio of intellectual trends once expected to render superstitious and hateful ideologies obsolete: the rise of information technology, widespread access to higher education, and the enshrinement of tolerance and diversity as state-sanctioned secular creeds.