The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory: From Machiavelli to QAnon

Andrew McKenzie-McHarg is coming to The Walrus on Tuesday 29 September for a talk on the history of conspiracy theories, and he's not doing it alone. He'll be in conversation with Rafael Behr, the Guardian political columnist and former Political Editor for the New Statesman. The whole thing is called The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory: From Machiavelli to QAnon.

McKenzie-McHarg is a researcher and historian at the Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, and this is his territory. He's spent years tracing the genealogy of conspiratorial thinking and how the very concept of a 'conspiracy theory' came to be. Before Rome, he was a research fellow at the Forschungszentrum Gotha, University of Erfurt, and worked on the Conspiracy and Democracy Project at the University of Cambridge. Behr brings the political side to the table, so it's a conversation between a historian and a journalist.

The talk starts by asking what a conspiracy theory actually is, and why the term describes beliefs so different from theories in the scientific sense. From there, it follows the thread through the centuries: Machiavelli and Savonarola, the French Revolution, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Nuremberg Trials, on through to Richard Hofstadter's 'paranoid style' and finally to QAnon. It's a long view of how we've come to think about secret plots, from the Renaissance right up to the present.

After the talk, there'll be a book signing for The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory, published by Princeton University Press. The evening is held in The Tusk Room downstairs at The Walrus, 10 Ship Street, BN1 1AD — just a heads-up that there's no wheelchair access to that room. Doors open at 19:00, the talk runs from 19:30 to 21:00, and tickets are £12.00.