The sentiment of Sarah Kendzior’s They Knew (2021) is relatable and potent, especially for us leftist Gen Xers increasingly awakening to the rampant corruption of the American system. Dark reading, this, and one should expect as much from a politically savvy writer like Kendzior, reeling from the collective traumas — the pandemic, the insurrection— that shaped its writing.
Subtitled “How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent,” They Knew may not be uplifting, but it’s well worth reading for its core premise. Kendzior performs an important service by deftly differentiating the term “conspiracy theory” from simple conspiracy — two terms often conflated by the powerful to shield themelves from accountability for their crimes. The book blends personal writing (as the author recounts her experience of 2021 through the lens of her family, her career, and her life in deep-purple Missouri) and journalistic reflection (on American politics, organized crime and political complicity, Pizzagate and Jeffrey Epstein, the first Trump administration, and more).
The tone is at once fierce and despairing, as the author diagnoses the United States’ many systemic problems, and how so very many of them are caused and sustained by actual conpiracies: cabals of the wealthy and powerful, literally conspiring to rig the game in their favor. Meanwhile, an ongoing weaponization of the term “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative — easily debunkable nothingburgers that discredit the theorist — has inured the public to the threat of conspiracy, convincing us that conspiracies of any sort are inherently implausible, no matter the magnitude. I’m not certain the thesis lands fully, an observation the author seems to share as she wrestles with the challenges of the deliberately reality-blurring subject she’s tackling, not to mention the inherent pessimism of accurate political observation in the 2020s. But it is an eye-opening read nonetheless, piercing the veil without quite lifting it, with a central insight that may serve a crucial step toward future reform.