Hope and Fear sells itself as a history of “pseudo-history” or what Ronald Fritze labels “junk knowledge” (14). Methodologically, this means taking a historical approach to conspiracy theories and broadly arguing that so-called junk knowledge has a long history. The book’s introduction serves as a bullhorn denouncing all that is untrue. Relying on psychological research, the first chapter provides some justification for why people believe conspiracy theories—despite these ideas being categorically false and irrational, according to Fritze. The subsequent chapters comprise the real meat of the text, however, which provides a historical overview on the myth of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, then skips between periods of European and American history: Inquisition Spain, Sabbatai Zvi in the Ottoman Empire, the Templars, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Nazis, and then Roswell, New Mexico.
The field of western esotericism might link these disparate cultural and historical periods together, if there were...
University of California Press