Hello,
This is a bit of an odd question. I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all, I don’t believe in lizard people or Qanon. However at the same time, there are some real conspiracies like Watergate, Epstein and so on.
My question is, is there a history of books being used as part of a conspiracy or propaganda campaign. Where a book is published and it appears to be innocent, but it later comes out that there was some dark money behind it, to inject a story. Were books used like this before the internet and podcasts?
The reason I ask is, a month ago I was in a shop and some old books were being sold for charity. I leafed through them and spotted one called ‘A Dream Too Far’. I read a bit, it’s a fairly generic thriller, an airport novel about a conspiracy involving the United States of Europe. Nothing too shocking and it seemed decent for what it was, a totalitarian state is a great plotline, I loved Handmaid’s Tale and 1984. However something about it felt weird. I had a strange feeling that the book was connected to UKIP, a UK political party which campaigned to leave the European Union.
I looked the book up, I thought I’d maybe find it was written by a UKIP counsellor or similar. I couldn’t find anything about the author, the book was self published by the author and I think his wife or sister. It was published in 1992, one year after UKIP was founded.
Now, obviously the date could just be a coincidence. Perhaps the author heard a UKIP politician and it inspired him, or just an idea in the zeitgeist. Again, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, especially without evidence, but for some reason I have the strongest gut feeling that this book was a very quiet and subtle marketing gimmick for UKIP.
Then today I was listening to the BBC radio series ‘The Coming Storm’ which tracked how conspiracy theories like Qanon grew. In it they interviewed an author of a true crime book published in the 90s, which tangentially involved a politician. The author was a serious journalist, not some crank. When asked about the book, he was evasive and seemed to have very selective amnesia. Some of the book was unquestionably true, but also uncritically reported any rumour or drunken rambling. Reading between the lines it sounded like the author had been hired to smear certain politicians and that was the real aim.
Was this a thing that used to happen? Books secretly funded to subtly plant seeds? Or am I completely overthinking. If not, are there any other examples?
by FluffyDoomPatrol