Lead editors:
André Krouwel, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, andre.krouwel@vu.nl
Andreas Önnerfors, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, andreas.onnerfors@gu.se

Call for Contributions / Chapters in the range of 10 – 12 000 words

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS 250-500 WORDS:

8 MAY 2019 BY EMAIL TO LEAD EDITORS

Rationale
Conspiracy Theories (CTs) have made a strong comeback in the recent global political vocabulary. CTs appeal to a fear that we are exposed to the machinations of an imagined invisible power and provide with explanations on complex socio-political changes and crises. The aim of this volume is to discuss a broad diachronic selection of cases in which CTs have shaped the understanding of Europe as continent as well as its culture and politics.
The foundational myths and the symbolical representation of Europe as a geopolitical entity are saturated by powerful imaginations (Passerini 2002, Fornäs 2012). Already the abduction of and unsuccessful search for the Phoenician princess Europa who gave the continent its name, places an unsolved mystery at the origin of its foundation. The aim of this volume is to shed light on the imaginations of invisible power that have influenced images of Europe, its scope, essence and future. In particular we want to investigate how different conspiracy theories have shaped and still shape the perception of the continent, its culture and politics. From the first political CTs in the aftermath of the French revolution to contemporary imaginations of the ‘Eurabia’-conspiracy there is ample evidence that conspiracism has informed discourses of political agency that have contributed to the geopolitical design of Europe. Whether it is the Vienna Congress in 1815 and ‘The Concert of Europe’ it occasioned, the dramatic events unfolding after the First World War, the reconfiguration of international politics through European unification after 1950, recurring economical and societal crises or more recent CTs, blaming Eurocrats to undermine Brexit: CTs have been developed and employed as an explanatory frame narrative within which political developments have been charged with meaning. In fact, it appears as no exaggeration to describe Europe as a ‘continent of conspiracies’.

We aim to unpack these topics by inviting a number of potential contributions focusing on:

- Historical origins and continuities of CTs in and about Europe (e g the ‘Illuminati-scare’ of the revolutionary era, assuming plots of secret societies directed against the ‘old political order’)
- The geopolitics of CTs on Europe: Europe as perceived as an actor outside Europe (e g in the MENA-region, Russia and the Ukraine)
- The Eurabia-conspiracy (receptions and expressions of Bat Ye’ors works on ‘Eurabia’ and their implications, e g Breivik)
- Links between Euroscepticism and CTs: e g Brexit, Eurocracy, the Greek economic crisis, fears of homogenization and hegemony, imaginations of Merkel as a Nazi and the EU as a German project to revert the outcome of the Second World War
- The psychological correlation between conspiracy thinking and views upon Europe
- European unification, Eurocrats and other conspiratorial imaginations of an undemocratic political caste that controls national governments (e. g. immigration as a ‘cultural Marxist’ plot to ‘bring down Judaeo-Christian culture of Europe’, bankers and entrepreneurs taking over national governments by forcing permanent austerity through EU financial rule and the Euro)
- ‘Gayropa’: the imagination of Europe as an ‘emo’-continent weakened in its masculinity by ‘LGBTIQ+’- rights, gender studies and feminism (e g by the Russian thinker Dugin)
- Imagination of conspirational plots to destroy Europe (for instance the ‘Protocols’, the ‘Kalergi Plan’)
- Counterfactual CTs on Europe (e g the German ‘Reichsbürgerbewegung’ and their refusal to accept the Versailles treaty)

The editors are of course open towards other suggestions as long as they engage with the overall rationale, that studies of CTs relate to Europe as a continent, culture or political entity.