The Nature of Conspiracy Theories. Michael Butter
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is never explained, however: apparently, this is something we all understand intuitively. ‘I know it when I see it’, an American judge once said about pornography, and the same applies to most of us when it comes to conspiracy theories. The present example is relatively clear-cut, and unless you subscribe to the myth of an international Jewish conspiracy and therefore believe Churchill to be simply stating a fact, you would probably describe his remarks as a conspiracy theory.
But what is it exactly about Churchill’s speech that earns it this label? What distinguishes his form of conspiracy theorizing from that of Nesta Webster, the source he draws on? And how does the open articulation of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory by perhaps the most important British politician of the twentieth century relate to the claim that conspiracy theories have recently been growing in popularity and influence? What role does the internet play in the spread of conspiracy theories, and how does it influence our belief in them? How long have conspiracy theories in general been around? What is the connection between conspiracy theories and populism? Who actually believes in them and why? Are they dangerous? And if so, what can we do about them?
The answers to these questions are much harder to find than conspiracy theories themselves. There is a glaring disparity between the heat with which the topic is currently discussed and the knowledge informing the vast majority of such discussions. All too often, ideas are described as conspiracy theories when they are not. Opponents of vaccination may be misguided, but not all of them are conspiracy theorists. Time and time again, different types of conspiracy theories are lumped together, whether they are directed against elites or minorities, and whether they are racist or not. And it is often assumed that that all conspiracy theories encourage violence, when their link with violence is in fact far more complex, as we shall see in the conclusion to this book.
Because of the upsurge of populism in Europe and the USA, and now the COVID-19 crisis, the concern about conspiracy theories has grown exponentially in recent years. In particular, the Brexit campaign and the election of Donald Trump as US president have rendered the public debate over conspiracy theories even more heated and unfocused, resulting for example in a blurring of boundaries between conspiracy theories and fake news. The coronavirus pandemic has done nothing to alleviate this conceptual confusion. But conspiracy theories and fake news are not the same. Conspiracy theories can be fake news – that is, false information deliberately circulated in order to discredit certain individuals and/or achieve some other objective. But not all conspiracy theories are fake news, and vice versa. Many conspiracy theorists are genuinely convinced that they have uncovered a plot; equally, not all deliberately circulated misinformation pertains to an alleged conspiracy. There is an important difference between claiming that concern about COVID-19 is exaggerated and contending that the panic is intentionally manufactured by dark forces in pursuit of some sinister goal.
The imprecise use of the term is not the only problem, however. Those who engage with conspiracy theories – and that goes for academics and journalists alike – often lack an adequate understanding of how they arise, what they do for those who believe in them, and what their potential consequences may be. This is due not least to the fact that only one study on the subject has so far had any notable and lasting impact on public perception: Richard Hofstadter’s famous 1964 essay on the ‘paranoid style in American politics’.4 Even in the USA, where some dozen compelling books on the subject have been published since the 1990s, few in the media have yet come up with a response to Donald Trump’s daily flirtation with conspiracism that doesn’t refer to Hofstadter’s essay.
Hofstadter, one of the most respected historians of his time, saw belief in conspiracy theories as bordering on clinical paranoia. By the same token, he claimed that, in the USA, the tendency to see conspiracies everywhere had always been confined to a minority on the margins of society. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon.com, the New Republic and many other media outlets used Hofstadter’s terminology to characterize Trump, and to some extent they still do. Even Hillary Clinton made reference to Hofstadter on one of the rare occasions when she commented directly on Trump’s conspiracy theories. At a hustings in Reno, Nevada in August 2016, she accused Trump of exploiting prejudices and paranoia, and appealed to moderate Republicans to resist the takeover of their party by the radical fringe.5 Outside the USA, too, Hofstadter’s text is still the most influential analysis of conspiracy theories to date. German media such as Die Zeit or Die Welt for example have also drawn on it in an attempt to understand the Trump phenomenon. Nor are things any better when it comes to other conspiracy theories: writing in August 2018, for instance, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde accused the followers of Jeremy Corbyn of ‘do[ing] politics in the paranoid style’.6
Scholars who study conspiracy theories, however, have long since come to regard Hofstadter’s text as outdated. While he makes many valid points, his pathologization of conspiracy theorists as paranoid is highly problematic. Moreover, given that – according to the latest empirical studies – half of the population of the USA, and nearly as many in most European countries, believe in at least one conspiracy theory, it is also completely meaningless.7 Other aspects of Hofstadter’s argument have proved wrong, too. In short, when it comes to understanding what conspiracy theories are and how they work, neither our intuition nor the one study which has shaped the public understanding of the subject are of any help.
It is the purpose of this book to provide a more accurate account of conspiracy theories. By examining the underlying principles, functions, effects and history of conspiracist thinking, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon. Naturally, I focus on current developments, in particular the association of conspiracy theories with populist rhetoric, as well as the role of the internet in their dissemination. In order to make sense of the present, however, we need a historical perspective. After all, the history of conspiracy theories is also inevitably that of the changing public spheres in which they circulate, and of the media environments that shape them. If we want to understand how the internet – where counterpublics are formed so much more easily than outside the virtual environment, and where conspiracy theories can be continuously updated – influences the forms and functions of conspiracist suspicions, we need to know what things were like before: that is, what influence other media regimes exerted in earlier times.
The crux of my argument is that it is, above all, the status of conspiracy theories in public discourse that has changed most radically over time, and that it is now changing once again. Even if it might feel like it at times, we are not living in a golden age of conspiracy theories. It is not true that conspiracism is more popular and influential now than ever before. On the contrary: conspiracy theories are currently generating so much discussion precisely because they are still a stigmatized form of knowledge whose premises are regarded with extreme scepticism by many people. And therein lies the difference between past and present. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a perfectly legitimate form of knowledge whose underlying assumptions were beyond question. It was therefore normal to believe in them. Only after the Second World War did conspiracy theories begin to undergo a complex process of delegitimization in the USA and Europe, causing conspiracist knowledge to be banished from public discourse and relegated to the realm of subcultures.
On the one hand, the current ‘renaissance’ of conspiracy theories is partly connected with the rise of populist movements, in that there are structural parallels between populist and conspiracist arguments. On the other hand, the internet plays a key role because it has made conspiracy theories – which had flown under most people’s radar for a while – highly visible and easily available again. In addition, the internet has been a catalyst for the fragmentation of the public sphere. What we are experiencing now is a situation where conspiracy theories are still stigmatized in some domains – particularly those we continue to regard as mainstream – but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over such theories. While some people are fearful (once again) of conspiracies, others are (or remain) more concerned with the dire consequences of conspiracy theories. In this respect, you could say we are entering a third phase in the