Watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, one could be forgiven for believing we're living in the heyday of conspiracy theories, between the Holocaust denialism of the Oath Keepers, the loony pedophilia fears of the QAnoners and the "Stop the Steal" ravings of Sidney Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and former President Donald Trump himself.
But don't be too sure. Conspiracy theories have a long history. They date back to the Emperor Nero and the great fire of Rome, for instance, and to the ritual murder accusations against Jews in medieval Europe. They're as American as the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts.
Assassinations spawn them too, from Abraham Lincoln's (which was a conspiracy but presumably not orchestrated, as some suggested, by either the pope or Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) to John F. Kennedy's (which was carried out by Lee Harvey Oswald, not by Vice President Lyndon Johnson or the CIA).
