is not only pervasive but increasingly varied in form. While many of the older religious and ideological forms remain—as, for example, among fundamentalist Protestants—these have been joined by many other varieties that resist easy classification. These are the examples I call improvisational millennialism, and it is to improvisational millennialism that conspiracists have most often been drawn.
2
Millennialism, Conspiracy, and Stigmatized Knowledge
It has become a commonplace that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity. In 1978, William McLoughlin spoke of a religious resurgence that constituted a new “great awakening.” He expected it to end by about 1990. Instead, it intensified, driven in part by the proximity of the year 2000. Even the heyday of the Millerites, Shakers, Mormons, and Oneida Perfectionists in the 1830s and 1840s cannot compare to it, and there is no sign that millenarian anticipation will diminish anytime soon. The uneventful passage from 1999 to 2000 has had little effect on many millenarians, who merely set the date of the apocalypse ever further in the future.1
What makes the present period an era of particular interest to observers of millennialism, however, is less the sheer volume of activity than its bewildering diversity. Attempts to map contemporary millennial ferment have become increasingly difficult and frustrating. The reason, I suggest, is not simply that there is so much “out there,” but that old categories no longer fit well. Much of the proliferating millennialism is neither of the old religious variety, whose roots lie in the theological controversies of earlier centuries, nor a product of secular ideological battles that dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While neither of the latter strains of millennialism has vanished, they share the stage with a rapidly growing third variety, which is the subject of this chapter.
RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR MILLENNIALISM
The Christian idea of the millennium is rooted conceptually and etymologically in the New Testament passage that prophesies that at the end of time, the saved will “reign with Christ a thousand years” until the Last Judgment (Rev. 20:4). By extension, millennialism—belief in this end-time—came to mean any religious vision that saw history reaching its climax in a collective, this-worldly redemption. In this redeemed state, those who had once suffered would receive justice, and the poor and powerless would gain what had formerly been withheld from them. Although religious institutions often had a decidedly ambivalent attitude about this implied rejection of the status quo, the origin of millennialism in a canonical text insured its survival, and resilient strains of millenarian popular religion continue in Christianity into the present. They can be seen especially in the many contemporary religious fundamentalisms, most of which contain millenarian elements.
By the late eighteenth century, however, a second form of millennialism was developing, unconnected to religious concepts. This consisted of secular visions of a perfect future—ideas propelled by faith in transcendent but not conventionally religious forces. These forces were sometimes identified with reason, and sometimes with science or history. By the late nineteenth century, secular millenarian visions had become closely linked with political ideologies, especially those that grew out of ideas about nationality, class, and race. Hence the twentieth century was both dominated and scarred by Marxism, Nazism, and a host of nationalisms, all of which promised a millennial consummation to some group judged to be particularly worthy. Like earlier religious millenarians, these secular ideologists linked the end-times with a great battle between the forces of good and evil—not a literal, biblical Armageddon, but a struggle of comparably cosmic importance.
Thus, by the mid- to late twentieth century, millenarian beliefs could be conveniently classified in either of these two broad categories. To be sure, disagreements might arise. The more religiously inclined might question whether any secular beliefs not grounded in sacred texts could be considered millenarian. Millenarians in the West sometimes disputed the application of the label to non-Christian belief systems, especially those in the non-Western world, such as the cargo cults of Melanesia. (Members of these South Pacific island sects claimed to possess secret knowledge, allegedly hidden from them by Christian missionaries. They believed the manipulation of this knowledge would bring them a utopia of unlimited manufactured goods of the kind introduced by their colonizers.) Some secular millenarians, notably Marxists, resented the application to themselves of any term that might associate them with religionists. These objections, however, tended to originate from believers rather than scholars, most of whom have been willing to apply millenarian to both secular and religious manifestations far outside the term’s original Christian frame of reference.
A tacit consensus thus developed, at least in academic quarters, about the idea of two streams of millenarian beliefs, one flowing from religious traditions and the other from secular thought. This division provided a handy classificatory schema, especially for Western history, which seemed to move from an age of religious struggles to one of ideological warfare. This simple schema, however, does not work well any longer.
The reason has little to do with the relative health of religious and secular millennialism. Both have flourished. Although it was once believed that forces for secularization would inevitably marginalize religion, the last three or four decades of the twentieth century demonstrated the vitality of many religious traditions. This is particularly evident in the growth of fundamentalisms—religious movements that seek to restore what believers consider a pristine, uncorrupted tradition. Such movements are characterized by their emphasis on the literal reading of sacred texts and the drive to remold society in conformity with religious norms. Such movements—whether in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Islam—have demonstrated both rapid growth and the ability to mobilize to pursue political objectives. While not all fundamentalisms are millenarian, many, in their quest for doctrinal purity, give millenarian teachings a position of prominence.2
Secular millennialism has been less vital, a product of what Daniel Bell famously referred to as “the end of ideology.” The great left-right battles that polarized Western politics for more than a century have largely died down. Whether the collapse of the Soviet empire was a cause or an effect of this process is a question beyond the scope of this inquiry. Nonetheless, the Soviet collapse seemed to some the definitive end of ideological battle, a point made in a triumphalist manner by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man. Samuel Huntington, who reacted somewhat differently, argues that the resurgence of religion as a polarizing force was the result of the diminished salience of ideology. In any case, in the hands of ideologues, Cold War battles developed a significant millenarian dimension, seeming to pit the forces of light (“the free world”) against the forces of darkness (“the evil empire”), with the prospect of nuclear Armageddon ahead.3
While it may seem that ideology has died out in a post–Cold War world, islands of secular millennialism remain. They appear in the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in many parts of the world, notably the Balkans, the Caucasus, and South Asia. They also appear in the racist and xenophobic movements that are prominent in western and central Europe and, to a lesser degree, in North America. Finally, they emerge in some antiglobalization rhetoric, with its implied nostalgia for a lost golden age of small, self-sufficient communities. Thus it would be incorrect to say that the older millennialisms, whether religious or secular, have disappeared; both can be found in numerous vital forms. Nonetheless, they have been joined by a third variety, which I call the improvisational millenarian style.
THE RISE OF IMPROVISATIONAL MILLENNIALISM
The improvisational millenarian style is distinctive for its independence from any single ideological tradition. Its predecessors—the religious and secular styles—consisted of variations on or deviations from some well-defined set of ideas, whether grounded in sacred texts, political ideologies, or philosophical teachings. By contrast, the improvisational style is characterized by relentless and seemingly indiscriminate borrowing. For example, Shoko Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, drew not only
