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Tuesday 15 March 2011

Voodoo Histories, David Aaronovitch

“You did this hit piece because your corporate masters instructed you to.  You are a controlled asset of the New World Order… bought and paid for.”  “Everyone has some skeleton in the cupboard.  How else would MI5 and the Special Branch recruit agents?”  “Shill, traitor, sleeper”, “leftwing gatekeeper”, “accessory after the fact”, “political whore of the biggest conspiracy of them all”....  Having spent years building up my left-wing credibility on behalf of my paymasters in MI5, I’ve blown it.  I overplayed my hand, and have been exposed, like Bush and Cheney, by a bunch of kids with laptops.  My handlers are furious.

Such are the words of the writer and journalist George Monbiot, a hard left Bush-hater who nonetheless thought that the guy probably wasn't responsible for 9/11.  Aaronovitch, a former communist turned Blairite, has taken similar, rather undeserved, stick in some quarters for writing this book.  This is a shame, because it is well-written and informative, even if the author sometimes seems to have sacrificed depth for breadth in his treatment of the century's most famous conspiracy theories.  Its cover reveals that it has been praised by such strange bedfellows as AC Grayling and Andrew Roberts.