The proliferation of conspiracy theories across social media today may seem like a hazard of the digital age, but it has ties to a home movie taken by a Dallas businessman more than 50 years ago.
Abraham Zapruder was among the thousands who turned out in Dallas on November 22, 1963, to catch a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy.
Zapruder aimed his 8mm Bell & Howell home movie camera at the president’s motorcade as it rolled by, and by chance captured the assassination on film.
Because it appeared to show that Kennedy was shot in the front of the head, the film stirred up controversy: the government’s official investigation by the Warren Commission reported that the president had been shot from behind.
That contradiction gave rise to another one: The film seemed to indicate that there were at least two shooters, while the Warren Commission maintained that there had been only one.
These contradictions opened the door to countless books advancing one conspiracy after another about who killed the president and why. Conspiracy-thinking became a fact of American life.
Today, the blurring of the distinction between fact and fiction on social media seems to invite anyone to step forward with homemade “facts” to argue almost anything, for example that a Washington pizza restaurant was a front for a child sex ring.
But some historians believe that the tendency to fall back on conspiracy theories is evidence of a more disturbing trend: Americans increasingly mistrust government and their elected officials.