• Michel J. Gagné

    Canada   Michel Jacques Gagné teaches critical thinking, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and ethics in the Humanities Department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, a junior college (CÉGEP) located in Montreal. He is the author of Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories (Routledge, 2022). His writings have appeared in Skeptic, the National Post, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Quillette, The Historian, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Violence, The Epoch Times, and History Studies: The Historical Journal of the University of Limerick. He is the creator and host of the Paranoid Planet podcast and a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, a Canadian think tank focused on public discourse, history, and education. He lives in the Montreal suburbs with his wife and two children.   Selected publications

    • Thinking critically about the Kennedy assassination: Debunking the myths and conspiracy theories. Gagné, M. J. (2022). Routledge.

    Canada
    • Thinking critically about the Kennedy assassination: Debunking the myths and conspiracy theories. Gagné, M. J. (2022). Routledge.

The High Cabal and the lynch mob: Exploring conspiracism through René Girard’s Scapegoating Theory

Volume 8, 2025

Michel J. Gagné
Drawing on Girard’s theory, this piece explores how conspiracy movements offer cult-like belonging and identity through scapegoating, myth, and collective moral outrage.