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William Cooper was an American
conspiracy theorist most active

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between the late 80s into the
early 2000s. He was an author, a

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lecturer and the host of a
shortwave radio show called The

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Hour of the Time. Among many
things, Cooper claimed to have

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insider knowledge of a far
reaching plot to consolidate all

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people of all nations into a
socialist New World Order. He

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was highly influential and his
fingerprints can be found all

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over the place from the Oklahoma
City bombing to contemporary Q

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Anon mythos. Despite this
influence Cooper has never been

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studied by academia, which is a
shame because most rhetoricians

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struggle when confronting
conspiracy theory with trying to

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determine whether or not it's a
product of delusion or if it's a

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product of political strategy.
Cooper's narratives are

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interesting because they fit
neither or it's hard to tell.

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But this provides a great
opportunity for us to discover

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new patterns in conspiracy
theory by examining Cooper. To

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this end, I selected about 40
hours of his radio material, a

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series collectively called the
Mystery Babylon Series for my

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artifact of analysis, most of
the tools that I use came from

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the communication scholar Janis
Hocker Rushing, who detailed a

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series of narrative tropes that
feed what is called the Western

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hero archetype. Now, fans of
Western or cowboy movies will be

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most familiar with these as they
outline a lone gunman entering a

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savage frontier to complete a
quest that will save the

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helpless community. Hocker
Rushing points out though, that

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these tropes can also be used to
describe historical narratives.

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A great example being the Cold
War space race propaganda. So

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Cooper makes a similar move in
defense of an idealized America

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by going up to confront a new
world order on the frontier of

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history. This is most evident
and how he constructs himself as

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a lone patriot facing an
enormous enemy. He also mirrors

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the occupants and the landscape
of the American frontier. In his

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treatment of history, one of the
narratives forwarded and the

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Mystery Babylon Series is that
pre Columbian indigenous

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cultures were actually
influenced by if not the product

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of Middle Eastern secret
societies, which still control

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our government to this day. What
he's doing is taking the entire

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human history of the Americas
and condensing it into his

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American frontier narrative.
This positions him as a

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paramount agent in an unending
Manifest Destiny, which is

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incredibly dangerous considering
the proclivity for violence

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shared by Cooper, and many of
his notable fans such as Timothy

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McVeigh, and a younger Alex
Jones. It's obviously very

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important that we track these
patterns so that we can

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eventually disrupt them. Thank you.