And make no mistake, it is a business. That’s not to say that Jones isn’t a believer -- there are easier ways to make money -- but Jones has built a multi-platform new media empire in his Austin, Texas, Free Speech Systems LLC that reaches millions of believers and promises advertisers that it will “direct lucrative buyers to you from our daily audience of active enthusiasts.” And all told, Jones is very likely raking in millions.

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In the book “The Empire of Conspiracy,” Timothy Melley explains that conspiracy theories have traditionally been regarded by many social scientists as “the implausible visions of a lunatic fringe,” often inspired by what the late historian Richard Hofstadter described as “the paranoid style of American politics.” Influenced by this view, many scholars have come to think of conspiracy theories as paranoid and delusional, and for a long time psychologists have had little to contribute other than to affirm the psychopathological nature of conspiracy thinking, given that conspiricist delusions are commonly associated with (schizotype) paranoia.

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As The Daily Beast reported yesterday, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is ostensibly designed to promote a discourse about U.S. foreign policy. But its advisory board is stacked with what writer James Kirchik characterized as “a bevy of conspiracy theorists, cranks, and apologists for some of the worst regimes on the planet.”

And just who are the far-right luminaries helping guide Paul’s new endeavor?

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You thought the conservative broadcaster had been banished to the Siberia that is the Internet since he left Fox News in June of 2011, but thanks to some signature conspiracy theorizing in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Beck is back, baby. Just look at this Google Trends chart for searches of his name beginning the month after he left Fox:

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It's not particularly surprising that Tsarnaev would be drawn to a wide range of conspiracy theories, as research shows that people prone to believing one conspiracy theory will likely believe many -- even if they're completely contradictory. And he fits a profile of a type of person likely to be drawn to conspiratorial thinking, considering he was allegedly alienated from and disgruntled with society.

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We don't know why Tamerlan and his brother blew up the Boston Marathon -- we may never really know -- but we do know that in doing so, they were performing a kind of masculinity that took control of the city through public destruction.

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Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia, published a paper late last month in the journal Psychological Science that has received widespread praise for looking at the thinking behind conspiracy theories about science and climate change. We asked him to explain the psychology of conspiracy theories. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Of course, Jones and his comrades at InfoWars thinks the brothers suspected in the bombing are innocent, citing such reliable sources as Twitter user "Trippin No L’ 4/20."

But if the brothers Tsarnaev didn't do it, who did? Jones laid out his unified theory of the event yesterday in a video promising "PROOF!" that the event was "staged" and an accompanying blog post.

The basic outline is the same as all of his projects: A globalist cabal working through the U.S. government staged a "false flag" operation that will be blamed on terrorists as pretext to take away guns and civil liberties and eventually tyranny. Eventually, they will depopulate the entire planet through massive genocides.

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Claiming that he had identified the suspect who remains at large, Jones boasted, "the media doesn't even have this yet. The FBI will probably give it to them in a day." In fact, the AP and cable news networks identified the two suspects just two or three hours later as Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

But despite supposedly knowing the ID of the suspect, Jones wasn't above speculating about their nationality. "These guys kind of look like Israelis. I'm not saying Israel is involved in it, we don't have any evidence of that. It's just that they kind of look Israeli," he said while pointing to an image of the suspects on a computer screen. He added that they could be "North African" or "Spanish-Muslims." He did not speculate they were Chechens.

He also called MIT, where the suspects reportedly killed a police officer, "mind control central."

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Alex Jones, who has become the country's preeminent conspiracy theorist, wasted no time. As with 9/11, Sandy Hook and other national tragedies, he sees the Boston explosions as a "false flag" attack committed by the government. The objective this time: Expanding the Transportation Security Administration's reach to sporting events:

Our hearts go out to those that are hurt or killed #Boston marathon - but this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) April 15, 2013

Explosions at the Boston Marathon. Don't that the FBI has been behind virtually every domestic terror plot in the US, as NY Times reported.

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) April 15, 2013

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As with the Sandy Hook shooting, the Aurora massacare has attracted a host of conspiracy theories, and harassment of victims has gotten so bad that prosecutors there asked the judge to redact the names of victims in court documents to spare them the “relentless contacts by proponents of purported ‘conspiracies.’”

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Thirty-seven percent of voters, including 58 percent of Republicans, believe that global warming in a hoax. Six percent believe Osama bin Laden is still alive, while 13 percent think Barack Obama is the antichrist (including 22 percent of Romney voters). Five percent believe Paul McCartney actually died in 1966.

Perhaps the weirdest: 4 percent say "they believe 'lizard people' control our societies by gaining political power."

More from the survey:

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Jones and Salon do not typically get along, but he liked this story, republishing our piece and appending this note:

COMMENT FROM ALEX JONES: The headline, “Billy Corgan’s strange infatuation with a conspiracy theorist“, was a bit snot-nosed and pretentious, and you can bet wasn’t written by the author. But other than that, it reads as overall factual and non-biased, for which I salute Salon, which in the past has been an engine of bullshit. I’m glad to see that Billy’s wish to have a truly constructive conversation about the nature of reality is happening; we may have even reached someone at Salon. Thank the maker; thoughtcrime is spreading.

Jones will be sad to learn that the author (yours truly) did, in fact, write the headline, so we'll take this as a backhanded compliment, but a compliment nonetheless. Previously, Jones has accused us of being government-funded stooges, so kudos to Jones as well, we suppose, for stepping out of his typically knee-jerk opposition to all things liberal and enjoying a story that helps spread the word that he has a famous friend.

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Hunt is in his 20s and lives in New York City, where he is an “actor, musician, artist and independent journalist.” He’s starred in Shakespeare plays and independent films and written books and news reports. His roots aren’t in the radical-right or libertarian movements, but on the left side of the political spectrum, where he’s aligned himself with Occupy Wall Street and says he’s produced segments for WBAI, a well-known public radio station in New York affiliated with the proudly “radical” left-wing Pacifica network.

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In a document filed with the Arapahoe County District Court Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney George Brauchler wrote that conspiracy theorists "have contacted victims in this case, some of whom have even gone so far as to recruit other members of the public to contact the victims and to publicly post maps with the home addresses and phone numbers of the victims on various social media sites."

The document said that some victims and their families "have expressed concerns for their privacy, and personal safety,” and warned the harassment could “adversely affect the administration of justice in this case” because many of the targets are witnesses.

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But it’s hard to believe that the pop singer, who is preparing for the Super Bowl halftime show, hadn't already heard it all. After all, an entire corner of the Internet believes her daughter is the Antichrist.

Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, are just two of the popular music stars whose ties to the so-called Illuminati have come in for Zapruder-level scrutiny online, on sites like Vigilant Citizen, Media Exposed, and, yes, Beyonce-Illuminati.com.

The fear of the entity known as the Illuminati is neither unique — Bey and Jay join Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Kanye West, and practically every prominent banker and politician on Earth is under conspiracy theorists' microscope — nor novel. The original Bavarian Illuminati, a short-lived Enlightenment group devoted to overthrowing the local government, would likely have been forgotten, said "Occult America" author Mitch Horowitz, had Scottish physicist John Robison not speciously alleged in 1797 that the group had infiltrated the Freemasons and instigated the French Revolution.

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Tracy has been lying low since sparking international controversy recently by writing a blog post advancing conspiracy theories about the massacre, but he broke his silence this afternoon with an hour-and-20-minute-long interview on the radio program hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Today, however, Jones was out, so Tracy spoke with guest host Paul Joseph Watson. (The "crisis actors" myth is bogus, of course.)

In addition to theories  about Sandy Hook laid out in his blog post, Tracy distanced himself from some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories out there. Those theories, he said, may be the work of whoever is trying to hide the truth about Sandy Hook.

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Unfortunately, that’s probably not the case. The genie is already out of the bottle and this myth will likely only heat up as the debate over gun control does. "It's by far the hottest topic of the moment," David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the myth-debunking website Snopes.com told BuzzFeed. As the site’s Ben Smith and CJ Lotz wrote today, “Some of the factors that can bring theories in from the fringe appear to be driving its unexpected surge this month: A connection to America's intensely polarized political culture in general, and a message that appeals to a longstanding fear among gun owners, in particular.”

“This has gone super viral. It even surprised me how crazy insane the interest in this stuff is,” Paul Joseph Watson, a guest host for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show, said today.

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We’ve rounded up every major piece of evidence we could find that leads theorists to say the “official narrative” of events "doesn’t add up" and provided the facts that show why these questions can be easily explained. We’ve ignored the empty accusations with no evidence to support them (it was the Jews!) and focused only on the theories that try to present actual empirical or circumstantial evidence.

Let us know if we missed any and we’ll add to it as more myths emerge. In no particular order, here is your comprehensive guide to disproving the Sandy Hook Truthers:

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Eldon Bell, a retired Air Force officer, said: “This inauguration is a mistake and those who permit it to happen will have to live with their own consciences." He added: “Whether I watch depends on who’s being inaugurated. If it’s this guy, probably not, because I don’t pay much attention to illegitimate things.”

The Washington Post reports:

At this late date, Bell and his fellow believers in the notion that Obama was born overseas or is otherwise ineligible to be president still expect some court somewhere to buy into one of their theories. After more than 100 court cases, no judge has.

Even after Obama convincingly won reelection despite four years of low popularity ratings, a sluggish economy and a highly motivated opposition, advocates of various counterfactual theories about the president — he’s a foreigner, he’s a Marxist, he’s a Muslim — say they’re sticking to their fight.

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