Most conspiracy theories exist as part of “stigmatized knowledge” – that is, knowledge claims that have not been accepted by those institutions we rely upon for truth validation. Not uncommonly, believers in conspiracy theories also accept other forms of stigmatized knowledge, such as unorthodox forms of healing and beliefs about Atlantis and UFOs. Rejection by authorities is for them a sign that a belief must be true. However, the linkage of conspiracy theories with stigmatized knowledge has been weakening, because stigmatized knowledge itself is growing more problematic. What was once clearly recognizable as “the fringe” is now beginning to merge with the mainstream. This process of “mainstreaming the fringe” is the result of numerous factors, including the ubiquity of the Internet, the growing suspicion of authority, and the spread of once esoteric themes in popular culture. Only a permeable membrane now separates the fringe from the mainstream. Thus conspiracism is no longer the province only of small, isolated coteries. It now has the potential to make the leap into public discourse. This, of course, does not apply to every conspiracy theory, but it happens enough to suggest that we are at an important transition point. The recent controversy in the United States over whether a conspiracy existed to hide President Obama's alleged foreign birth – a claim that years earlier would never have emerged beyond small radical groups – suggests the nature of the change. It also suggests the dangers that political cultures may face in the future.

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks spawned a cottage industry of instant analysis. The result has been an avalanche of books that purport to explain terrorism, Islam, and the relationship between religion and violence. Most of the books written in the shadow of these events are superficial efforts unlikely to be remembered a few years hence. Bruce Lincoln's is a rare and distinguished exception. It is sure to outlast its competitors both in providing an understanding of 11 September and in offering broader frameworks for analyzing the linkages between religion and political change.

In the 1920s and early 1930s the Marxist legal theorist, Eugene Pashukanis, advanced the thesis that the achievement of communism would produce not only the dissolution of the state but of the legal system as well. Briefly, he argued that law was a direct result of economic exchange, that economic exchange was an integral part of bourgeois society, that all law was hence bourgeois law, and, finally, that the demise of bourgeois society would carry law with it. The fascination Pashukanis exerts is a direct product of the purity of his conclusion. The Revolution does not bring about a revision of the legal system, nor (except for a transitional period) does it even substitute one legal system for another. To the extent that the Revolution succeeds, it obliterates law qua law altogether.