Conspiracy theories aren’t about conspiracies
The OC register has an article discussing the views of an English professor on conspiracy theories:
Cal State Fullerton professor Elise Wang is one of 28 scholars across the country selected for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program, one of the nation’s most prestigious grants for social science and humanities researchers examining pressing societal issues.
So, what can someone studying Chaucer tell us about America in 2024?
It turns out quite a bit, Wang would say.
Her book project, which she will work on during the two-year fellowship, is titled “That’s What They Want You to Think: Identifying Dangerous Conspiracy Theories.”
Wang says that medieval texts, often revolving around miracles and sainthood, lay out narrative arcs that reveal a lot about the types of not-exactly-true stories people believe and why, structurally, they’re appealing.
Here’s an example of why I don’t view conspiracy theories as being about conspiracies. In a recent post, I argued that Nixon had been involved in a criminal conspiracy during the 1972 election campaign. A commenter suggested that Nixon was in fact innocent. So who is the conspiracy theorist?
In my view, the commenter was engaging in conspiracy theorizing, whereas I was representing the establishment view. I understand that this is not the literal meaning of the term “conspiracy theory”. But here I’m not talking about literal meanings, I am talking about actual real world usage of a term. He is the one with the interesting contrarian take.
Here’s another example. The CCP has clearly been trying to prevent investigation into evidence that Covid began in Wuhan, China. In a literal sense, that claim is a “conspiracy theory”. But the term conspiracy theory is not applied to the zoonosis hypothesis of the origin of Covid, only to the lab leak hypothesis, even though the CCP denies both. That’s because the lab leak hypothesis goes against the views of most Western virologists. If the establishment claimed it was a lab leak, the conspiracy theorists would be suggesting zoonosis.
You might argue that in order to be a conspiracy theory it is not enough for it to be a contrarian view, there must also be evidence that the establishment is covering up the truth. That’s What They Want You to Think.
The establishment certainly wants you to believe that Nixon was guilty. But suppose they really do believe that Nixon was guilty? Is it still a conspiracy theory? Now we are entering a grey area. Perhaps there is publicly available evidence exonerating Nixon, but the establishment is too lazy to examine the evidence.
My claim that the Fed caused the 2008-09 recession might be labeled a “conspiracy theory”, as it goes against the conventional wisdom among macroeconomists. On the other hand, most macroeconomists sincerely believe that I’m wrong, even that I’m slightly nuts. On the other, other hand, most economists do not want it to be true that the Fed caused the Great Recession, as the Fed’s policy is generally the consensus policy of America’s macroeconomists. Similarly, while most virologists sincerely believe that zoonosis caused Covid, they also do not want it to be true that a lab leak caused Covid.
In the end, I think “conspiracy theory” is a matter of degree. It’s not always about actual conspiracies, often it’s about cases where the members of establishment do not want you to accept a certain hypothesis, but are not actively conspiring with each other. An even weaker form of conspiracy theory is when the establishment doesn’t even know it’s covering up the truth, but its self-interested bias leads it to reject true explanations.
Trumpism is the mother of all conspiracy theories. His entire political career is based on the notion that he’s exposing a vast conspiracy of the elite, which is engaged in all sorts of nefarious evils such as wokism, Marxism, One Worldism, open borders, neoconservatism, and dozens of other crimes. One gigantic conspiracy theory. You say Trump lies all the time? That’s what the media wants you to believe.
You might argue that the Never-Trumpers are doing the same thing, with their overheated claims that Trump aims to abolish democracy and turn America into a fascist state. Those claims may be equally hyperbolic, but they don’t count as a conspiracy theory. Almost by definition, the elite cannot engage in conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories are claims that the elite is covering up the truth. And the elite actually believes that Trump is an anti-democratic threat.
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17. August 2024 at 05:20
I’ve been trying for years to get traction with my meta-conspiracy theory. That theory claims that there is no way that a bunch of uneducated yahoos somehow came up with these crazy theories about 9/11 truthers, fake moon landing people, birthers, etc. There is a secret group of elites creating crazy conspiracy theories for the rabble to believe. My evidence? There is none, which is EXACTLY what you’d expect from a well run conspiracy of the elites.
17. August 2024 at 06:23
Sumner, this post is too galaxy brained.
17. August 2024 at 08:10
Mark, I see that Trump is now ridiculing Congressional Medal of Honor winners that got wounded in action. Maybe Trump is a deep state conspiracy to discredit nationalism.
17. August 2024 at 10:42
Scott.
Apparently life is not too short.
While I pointed to some primary sources in the prior thread, the origin of looking into that was the recent WSJ Op Ed “Nixon Shouldn’t Have Resigned” from a couple weeks ago.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nixon-shouldnt-have-resigned-history-vindicates-my-1974-view-40f1592c
WSJ isn’t what it used to be but really something to see such an essay published.
The supreme court has recently intimated that the President cannot obstruct justice in Trump v. United States. I don’t think we are having enough discussion about that as possibly marking the end of a fifty years arc of constraining Presidential power — versus the prior ~50 years from Teddy Roosevelt to Nixon expansion of executive authority.
17. August 2024 at 12:32
Take a look at this, and tell me they aren’t conspiring.
https://x.com/RealKeriSmith/status/1824887429272117522
No idea who this person is, but it doesn’t matter right. Anyone can confirm that data through a simple google search.
They all use the same language, because they are all part of the WEF Trusted News Initiative. They are literally told what to say. It’s global propaganda machine.
The consensus is also meaningless, right? There was a consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. There was consensus in eugenics. There was once consensus around what physicists used to call an ether.
17. August 2024 at 14:03
Sumner, what do you make of the fairly obvious conspiracy of intelligence agents and physical therapists trying to block Americans from knowing the purpose of the human chin?
17. August 2024 at 20:37
Jon, We have the sort of Supreme Court you’d expect in a banana republic. They’ve basically allowed an elective dictatorship.
We’ll get what we deserve.
18. August 2024 at 05:04
Except We won’t deserve it. Median voter voted for Hillary Clinton.
18. August 2024 at 07:57
Bill, Good point. I was speaking too loosely.
18. August 2024 at 08:14
I thought I’d put your conspiracy theory definition to the dictionary definition test and running it through dictionary.com came up with, “An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act,” as the first definition of conspiracy and “To overthrow or destroy (a government or an established order or authority)” as the first definition of ”subvert.” So, yeah, a conspiracy theory is one that purposely challenges authority. I suppose in a totalitarian society it would also be inherently illegal, but in ours the theories are usually just called wrongful and subversive, although we do seem to have more people wanting to make them illegal because subversive.
18. August 2024 at 12:21
Human knowledge is now so vast that none of us understands more than the tiniest sliver of this knowledge. That means that every advance in society depends on trust in others. Conspiracy theories (and similar) are mostly just a demonstration of a failure of trust.
Almost everyone understands the importance of trust and that it must be earned rather than claimed. For example, I cannot claim that you trust me. Only you can say whether you trust me and whether I have done enough to earn your trust. The same is true in reverse.
However, many academics and other public figures seem to assume that they are from a superior species and have a right to be trusted. They claim authority. They claim to be public intellectuals. They claim to be an elite. They claim to be scientists (even when they do not follow the rules of science). However, they rarely appear to understand that their claims depend on trust from the rest of society that they have done little or nothing to earn. They may be intellectually intelligent, but they are socially unintelligent.
I am surprised that economists, and others in social studies, do not devote more time and effort to understanding why we trust some people but not others, and the implications of trust and failures of trust in social and economic situations. For example, why do most people trust physicists and medical doctors but not economists and politicians?
19. August 2024 at 00:52
Scott,
“…lmost by definition, the elite cannot engage in conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories are claims that the elite is covering..”
How on earth do you come to this conclusion?
I think you are overthinking this.
Let’s keep it simple, this is the definition everybody understands:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conspiring
it says, cospiring is:
“..to plan secretly with other people to do something bad, illegal, or against someone’s wishes…
so both, the elite AND its opponents are perfectly able to conspire against somebody for its own personal interests/benefits..
Morevoer, it has happened many times in history there is no basis for assuming that it won’t happen again..
Agree that the fed causing chaos by wrong policy focus does not qualify as conspiracy. The fed bailing out favorite industries to cover up the mess might qualify, however…
19. August 2024 at 09:37
Jamie, I would be very careful in trusting doctors.
Viennacapitalist, Of course the elite can engage in conspiracies. I was referring to conspiracy theories, not conspiracies.
19. August 2024 at 22:41
Scott,
my bad, I have not read this sentence carefully enough.
However, the elite can also entertain conspiracy theories . Being fearful of being toppled and having incomplete information they might come up with imaginary theories which they then peddle to the public. History is full of wrong conspiracy theories. The “Dolchstoß” comes to mind. Also, the Russian Revolution is full of misatributed conspiracy theories, as is the beginning of WW1, for instance.
As Austria’s most famous fin de siecle writer, Karl Kraus, said about the events surrounding WWI:
“you know it is war, when politicians reading the newspapers start believing the lies they themselves have fed to the journalists..”
(He was very critical of Journalists)
20. August 2024 at 05:21
Scott, I’m not sure what this issue is with the supreme court. It’s rulings have been delightfully closer to the constitution than any other court’s has been for the past century.
Roe was decided in favor of states rights, removing power from the federal system, including the court itself. The presidential immunity decision was reaffirming what has been true for most of the country’s existence, and would never been an issue if not for some people’s Trump mind bug. And Chevron, removing usurped power from the executive branch, and ultimately the court system, moving it back to Congress where the constitution says it resides.
I find when an institution removes power from itself and places it back where it belongs, it’s likely to be trustworthy.
20. August 2024 at 18:55
TMC, Trump’s own lawyers argued the opposite when he was being impeached; they said it should be handled by the courts, not Congress. Lots of liberal and conservative legal experts agree with me. (Luttig is one example.)
We’ll have to agree to disagree on presidents being entitled to order Navy Seals to assassinate their rivals. I agree with you on Roe and Chevron.
21. August 2024 at 07:34
This post is confusing, which may just be the real point of the post, something like “it’s impossible to make any sense out of conspiracy theories, either individually or as a group.”
“But the term conspiracy theory is not applied to the zoonosis hypothesis of the origin of Covid, only to the lab leak hypothesis, even though the CCP denies both. That’s because the lab leak hypothesis goes against the views of most Western virologists.”
After the last post, and the suggestion that the zoonosis:lab leak odds are 10:1 or so, it seems odd to call lab leak a conspiracy theory. It’s just a plausible theory.
Someone who has zoonosis:lab leak at 1:100 isn’t a conspiracy theorist, isn’t that just a stupid belief? (Assuming as I do that 10:1 is a smart belief). Wanting to believe in one of two possibilities so bad that you ignore or wish away the evidence for the other side doesn’t make someone a “conspiracy theorist,” does it? (Otherwise, wouldn’t the pro rent control people and many many others – possibly including me, on some issues – be conspiracy theorists?).
Which stupid beliefs are conspiracy theories, and which aren’t?
“[Trump’s] entire political career is based on the notion that he’s exposing a vast conspiracy of the elite, which is engaged in all sorts of nefarious evils such as wokism, Marxism, One Worldism, open borders, neoconservatism, and dozens of other crimes.”
There is at least one true conspiracy theory here that I can think of, the “great replacement” idea. (Or other ideas of that sort related to “open borders” – for example haven’t some of the Scott Adams or Tucker Carlson types claimed that they’re bringing in Chinese or Venezuelan hit squads to kill Republicans, or something like that?).
It’s hard to see why anyone who would say something like wokism is a conspiracy or conspiracy theory when it’s so out in the open.
I saw something on Twitter yesterday about Fox News talking about Obama’s birth certificate again – now that’s a real conspiracy theory, isn’t it?
I think the real sub-text of this post (as with many other TMI posts) is the way that the right wing and the left wing are becoming like their opposites, over time, and in many ways. They’re sort of “revolving,” like galaxies or weather patterns and ending up in different places, sometimes very near where their ideological opponents used to be.
I’ve always like the movie 3 Days of the Condor, an evil CIA film with the (unintentionally funny) speech at the end about how the point of the evil is to stave off looming economic catastrophe due to resource (oil) depletion. Were films like that a 60’s/70’s left-wing version of the MAGA “deep state” thing or not?
Why can’t some brilliant young MAGA film-maker make a film like that (besides the fact that there are no brilliant MAGAs)? Maybe such a film-maker could re-make 3 Days of the Condor, without changing very much, only this time what someone in Redford’s unit has found is evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.
Or how about a remake of Red Dawn where this time it’s those above-mentioned illegal immigrants who are invading, and it’s the Russians who show up to save America? (Putin turns out the true American patriot the whole time, just like we should have known).
22. August 2024 at 15:58
anon/portly, You said:
“After the last post, and the suggestion that the zoonosis:lab leak odds are 10:1 or so, it seems odd to call lab leak a conspiracy theory. It’s just a plausible theory.”
I see it in sociological terms. It’s less about whether a lab leak happened (which is possible), and more about potential cover-ups by the elite. There’s a view that the scientific community doesn’t want to admit the truth about labs. If the official story was lab leak, then conspiracy theorists would be saying that the top officials are covering up the horrible trade in wild animals.
“say something like wokism is a conspiracy or conspiracy theory when it’s so out in the open.”
They say they are trying to help minorities, but they are actually trying to emasculate white males. (Obviously I’m being sarcastic, so don’t quote me.)
“I think the real sub-text of this post (as with many other TMI posts) is the way that the right wing and the left wing are becoming like their opposites, over time, and in many ways. They’re sort of “revolving,” like galaxies or weather patterns and ending up in different places, sometimes very near where their ideological opponents used to be.”
That’s what happens when low information white voters move from one party to another.