Many Americans still believe in conspiracies

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll. A national survey of 811 adult residents of the United States conducted by Scripps and Ohio University found that more than a third believe in a broad smorgasbord of conspiracy theories including the attacks, international plots to rig oil prices, the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the government's knowledge of intelligent life from other worlds. The high percentage is a manifestation, some say, of an American public that increasingly distrusts the federal government. "You wouldn't have gotten these numbers a year or two after the attacks themselves," said University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster. "You've got an increasingly disaffected public that is unhappy with the administration." Fenster, author of the book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture," attributed the high percentage in part to the findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (also called the 9/11 Commission), which concluded federal officials failed to prevent the attacks, but did not have specific knowledge of the date of the attacks. An earlier Scripps Howard/Ohio University survey, conducted in July 2006, revealed that more than one-third of Americans thought federal officials assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.

www.unexplained-mysteries.com...

Im curious as to how many people here DONT believe in these conspiracies? Since many here at ATS DO believe in these theories, it makes me wonder just how many people here do NOT believe in these conspiracies?

Many people I know and speak with on a daily basis arent believers, yet id say in my experience the ratio is probably right around 50 percent.

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[edit on 1/21/2009 by maria_stardust]

Just because you do not believe in the "boogey man", does not mean he does not believe in you.


Conspiracies of some nature are performed everyday.. conspiracy to commit murder, fraud etc etc..

So.. if us, the little people, can commit our small conspiracies... what makes anyone think there are not conspiracies of grander scales being perpetuated?

Hey, let me tell you something.

Conspiracies are common politics!

There are quite a few legit conspiracies out there. Of course people would still believe in them.

You may say 'of course people believe in them' but this study was about Americans - most the rest of the world does NOT believe in conspiracies...

reply to post by Grock


I'm American and I believe in conspiracies.

I guess I find this study surprising because I feel that a large majority of Americans would just feel that conspiracies are crazy talk. Maybe I need to talk to more people. I haven't met very many people into conspiracy theorists and the like here. I've only had like one friend who was into conspiracy theories here... other people I've known mostly were skeptics of conspiracy theories... but people who I talk to are openly willing to admit that our government does things wrong and lies to us at times so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to the results of the study.

[edit on 20-1-2009 by Frankidealist35]

Yeah, even though i do know some people willing to talk in the open about conspiracy theorys, most of the time i feel like im one of those whackos that talk to themselves while walking down the public sidewalk (not that that is bad, in case one of you do that lol), so i dont talk about my beliefs in these areas in public very often.