Focus: The conspiracy code
A secret cabal has taken control of publishers and is making a fortune from our gullibility. Roland White delves into a plot where nothing is quite what it seems
Ever wondered why Mona Lisa has been looking so damned enigmatic for the past 500 years? Well, keep it to yourself but she�s concealing a dark and sinister secret.
This unassuming young woman is actually part of a massive conspiracy that involves a secret society, the Knights Templar, a monk assassin and serial murder, plus coded messages that cast doubt on the marital status of Christ. Seriously, this could blow the lid off the entire establishment of the Catholic church.
Don�t believe it? Well, it might be bunkum, but millions are already convinced. They have been studying details of the conspiracy in this summer�s hottest beach novel, The Da Vinci Code.
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When the hardback edition first appeared, one reviewer condemned the book as �utterly ridiculous�. It�s not elegantly written and was ignored by most critics. So what accounts for its astonishing popularity? The answer is that in a largely secular age, conspiracy theories are the new religion. After all, they are the perfect replacement: they absolve the believer from blame for the ills of the world while it�s hard to prove them, one way or the other, beyond doubt.
This state of affairs was predicted about 100 years ago by the writer GK Chesterton, a devout Catholic. �When people stop believing in God they don�t believe in nothing,� he said. �They�ll believe in anything.�
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It does not seem to matter that the conspiracy theorists are just as unreliable as politicians who make wayward claims about, say, weapons of mass destruction. In 1997, for example, Michael Drosnin, a Wall Street Journal reporter, published a book, The Bible Code. It claimed that the scriptures contain a hidden code predicting future events. It was an instant bestseller.
EXPERTS soon showed that the �code� was no more than the sort of patterns that could be found in any large volume of words. But that code still has its adherents and it is one of a number of phenomena to be studied in a four-part series, Conspiracies, starting next month on Sky One. It will also cast an eye over the Illuminati, a secret sect founded in the 18th century that some people claim is now running the world. That theory is clearly nonsense, of course; everybody knows that the world is run by the lizard Queen, funded by a drug-running operation controlled by MI6.
If you are looking to make your own fortune from a conspiracy theory, it�s essential to have two key ingredients: a historic event or character, plus an outlandish but faintly believable alternative to the accepted wisdom.
It also touches on conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and the "Solar Temple," September 11th, the fate of Osama Bin Laden (curiously failing to mention the - to my mind plausible - theory that he died at Tora Bora), and the sinking of the Titanic.
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