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Conspiracy theory

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For the 1997 film, see Conspiracy Theory (film).
This proposed logo for a U.S. government agency was dropped due to fears that its Masonic symbolism would provoke conspiracy theories.

A conspiracy theory is a type of argument that alleges an alternative explanation, secret coordination and sinister motive to what is commonly believed to be a straightforward historical or current event. Generally, the genre of conspiracy theories is associated with eccentric or paranoid individuals. Labelling an argument a conspiracy theory is an attempt to ridicule or dismiss it, leading some to consider the term controversial in application, especially in scientific contexts. The phrase is used primarily by detractors rather than proponents of a theory.

Introduction

Conspiracy theory, in contrast to conspiracy as a legal concept, is a narrative genre which includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of various conspiracies, each of which might have far-reaching social and political implications, if found to be true.

At least a few such arguments are undoubtedly false, raising the intriguing question of what mechanisms might exist in popular culture that lead to their invention and subsequent uptake. In pursuit of answers to that question, conspiracy theory has been a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy provoked an unprecedented level of speculation. This academic interest has identified a set of familiar structural features by which membership of the genre may be established, and has presented a range of hypotheses on the basis of studying the genre.

Whether or not a particular conspiracy allegation may be impartially or neutrally labelled a conspiracy theory is subject to controversy. If legitimate uses of the label are admitted, they work by identifying structural features in the story in question which correspond to those features listed below.

Features

Narratives exhibiting more than a few of the following features are candidates for membership of the conspiracy theory genre, with greater confidence in membership established the more such features a narrative exhibits:

  • Initiated on the basis of limited, partial or circumstantial evidence.
Conceived in reaction to media reports and images, as opposed to, for example, thorough knowledge of the relevant forensic evidence.
  • Addresses an event or process that has broad historical or emotional impact.
Seeks to interpret a phenomenon which has near-universal interest and emotional significance, a story that may thus be of some compelling interest to a wide audience.
  • Reduces morally complex social phenomena to simple, immoral actions.
Impersonal, institutional processes, especially errors and oversights, interpreted as malign, consciously intended and designed by immoral individuals.
  • Personifies complex social phenomena as powerful individual conspirators
Related to (3) but distinct from it, deduces the existence of powerful individual conspirators from the 'impossibility' that a chain of events lacked direction by a person.
  • Allots superhuman talents and/or resources to conspirators.
May require conspirators to possess unique discipline, never to repent, to possess unknown technology, uncommon psychological insight, historical foresight, etc.
Inductive steps are mistaken to bear as much confidence as deductive ones.
  • Appeals to 'common sense'.
Common sense steps substitute for the more robust, academically respectable methodologies available for investigating sociological phenomena.
  • Exhibits well-established logical and methodological fallacies
Formal and informal logical fallacies are readily identifiable among the key steps of the argument.
  • Is produced and circulated by 'outsiders', generally lacking peer review
Story originates with a person who lacks any insider contact or knowledge, and enjoys popularity among persons who lack critical (especially technical) knowledge.
  • Is upheld by persons with demonstrably false conceptions of relevant science
At least some of the story's believers believe it on the basis of a mistaken grasp of elementary scientific facts.
  • Enjoys zero credibility in expert communities
Academics and professionals tend to ignore the story, treating it as too frivolous to invest their time and risk their personal authority in disproving.
  • Rebuttals provided by experts are ignored or accommodated through elaborate new twists in the narrative
When experts do respond to the story with critical new evidence, the conspiracy is elaborated (sometimes to a spectacular degree) to discount the new evidence.

Origins of conspiracy theory

Humans naturally respond to events or situations which have had an emotional impact upon them by trying to make sense of those events, typically in values-laden spiritual, moral or political terms, though occasionally in scientific terms.

Events which seem to resist such interpretation—for example, because they are, in fact, senseless—may provoke the inquirer to look harder for a meaning, until one is reached that is capable of offering the inquirer the required emotional satisfaction. As sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations of World War I:

Those events that are most important are hardest to understand, because they attract the greatest attention from mythmakers and charlatans.

This normal process may be diverted according to a number of influences. At the level of the individual, pressing psychological needs may influence the process, and certain of our universal mental tools may impose epistemic 'blind spots'. At the group or sociological level, historic factors may make the process of assigning satisfactory meanings more or less problematic.

Psychological origins

The search for meaningfulness outlined above features in most psychological commentary on conspiracy theory, in one form or another. That desire alone may be powerful enough to lead to the initial formulation of the idea. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part.

Epistemic bias?

It is possible that certain basic human epistemic biases are projected onto the material under scrutiny. According to one study humans apply a 'rule of thumb' by which we expect a significant event to have a significant cause. The study offered subjects four versions of events, in which a foreign president was (a) successfully assassinated, (b) wounded but survived, (c) survived with wounds but died of a heart attack at a later date, and (d) was unharmed. Subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of the 'major events'—in which the president died—than in the other cases, despite all other evidence available to them being equal.

Another epistemic 'rule of thumb' that can be misapplied to a mystery involving other humans is cui bono? (who stands to gain?). This sensitivity to the hidden motives of other people might be either an evolved or an encultured feature of human consciousness, but either way it appears to be universal. If the inquirer lacks access to the relevant facts of the case, or if there are structural interests rather than personal motives involved, this method of inquiry will tend to produce a falsely conspiratorial account of an impersonal event. The direct corollary of this epistemic bias in pre-scientific cultures is the tendency to imagine the world in terms of animism. Inanimate objects or substances of significance to humans are fetishised and supposed to harbor benign or malignant spirits.

Clinical psychology

For relatively rare individuals, an obsessive compulsion to believe, prove or re-tell a conspiracy theory may indicate one or more of several well-understood psychological conditions, and other hypothetical ones: paranoia, denial, schizophrenia, Mean world syndrome.

Sociopolitical origins

Christopher Hitchens represents conspiracy theories as the 'exhaust fumes of democracy', the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people. Other social commentators and sociologists argue that conspiracy theories are produced according to variables which may change within a democratic (or other type) of society.

Conspiratorial accounts can be emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to assign moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation to a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer. The believer may then feel excused any moral or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the actual source of the dissonance. Alternatively, believers may find themselves committed to a type of activism, to expose the alleged conspirators; see, for example, the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Where given social conditions render acting in such a responsible way taboo, or simply beyond the individual's resources, the conspiracy theory thus permits the emotional discharge or closure such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman) demand of us all. Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities which are experiencing social isolation or political disempowerment.

Mark Fenster argues that "just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean they are not on to something. Specifically, they ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm" (1999: 67).

For example, the modern form of anti-Semitism is identified in Britannica 1911 as a conspiracy theory serving the self-understanding of the European aristocracy, whose social power waned with the rise of bourgeois society.

A particularly political individual or group may respond skeptically or cynically towards an event or process which does not fit with his/its existing worldview. For example, a neo-Nazi or an anti-Israeli organization such as Hizbollah might promote claims of Jewish involvement in 9/11 in order to incorporate that event into its own political narrative in a manner compatible to meeting its own ends.

Disillusionment

In the late 20th century, Western societies increasingly experienced a process of disengagement, disaffection or disillusionment with traditional political institutions among their general populations. Falling election participation and declines in other key metrics of social engagement were noted by several observers. For a prominent example, see Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone thesis. Generation X is characterized by its cynicism towards traditional institutions and authorities, offering a case example of the context of political disempowerment detailed above.

In that context, a typical individual will tend to be more isolated from the kinds of peer networks which grant access to broad sources of information, and may instinctively distrust any statement or claim made by certain people, media and other authority-bearing institutions. For some individuals, the consequence may be a tendency to attribute anything bad that happens to the distrusted authority. For example, some people continue to attribute the September 11, 2001 attacks to a conspiracy involving the U.S. government (or disfavored politicians) instead of to Islamic terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda. Please see 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Media tropes

Media commentators regularly note a tendency in news media and wider culture to understand events through the prism of individual agents, as opposed to more complex structural or institutional accounts. If this is a true observation, it may be expected that the audience which both demands and consumes this emphasis itself is more receptive to personalised, dramatic accounts of social phenomena.

A second, perhaps related, media trope is the effort to allocate individual responsibility for negative events. The media has a tendency to start to seek culprits if an event occurs that is of such significance that it does not drop off the news agenda within a few days. Of this trend, it has been said that the concept of a pure accident is no longer permitted in a news item . Again, if this is a true observation, it may be expected to reflect a real change in how the media consumer perceives negative events.

Controversies

Aside from controversies over the merits of particular conspiracy claims (see catalog below), and the various differing academic opinions (above), the general category of conspiracy theory is itself a matter of some public contestation.

Legitimate usage

Conspiracy theory is considered by different observers to be a neutral description for a conspiracy claim, a perjorative term used to dismiss such a claim, and a term that can be positively embraced by proponents of such a claim. The most widely accepted sense of the term is that which popular culture and academic usage share, certainly having negative implications for a narrative's probable truth value.

Given this popular understanding of the term, it is conceivable that the term might be used illegitimately and inappropriately, as a means to dismiss what are in fact substantial and well-evidenced accusations. The legitimacy of each such usage will therefore be a matter of some controversy. Disinterested observers will compare an allegation's features with those of the category listed above, in order to determine whether a given usage is legitimate or prejudicial.

Certain proponents of conspiracy claims and their supporters argue that the term is entirely illegitimate, and should be considered just as politically manipulative as the Soviet practice of treating political dissidents as clinically insane. The term conspiracy theory is itself the object of a type of conspiracy theory, which argues that those using the term are manipulating their audience to disregard the topic under discussion, either in a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth, or as dupes of more deliberate conspirators.

When conspiracy theories are offered as official claims (ie originate from a Governmental authority, such as an intelligence agency) they are not usually considered as conspiracy theories. For example, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee may be understood as an official attempt to promote a conspiracy theory, yet its claims are seldom referred to as such.

The truth of a conspiracy theory

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of conspiracy theory is the problem of settling a particular theory's truth to the satisfaction of both its proponents and its opponents. Particular accusations of conspiracy vary widely in their plausibility, but some common standards for assessing their likely truth value may be applied in each case:

  • Occam's razor - is the alternative story more, or less, probable than the mainstream story? Rules of thumb here include the multiplication of entities test.
  • Psychology - does the conspiracy accusation satisfy an identifiable psychological need for its proposer?
  • Falsifiability - are the "proofs" offered for the argument well constructed, ie, using sound methodology?
  • Whistleblowers - how many people–and what kind–have to be loyal conspirators?

On some occasions a particular accusation of conspiracy is found true (see for example, Emile Zola's accusations concerning the Dreyfus Affair). Where such success is due to sound investigative methodology, it is clear that it would not exhibit many of the compromising features identified as characteristic of conspiracy theory, and would thus not commonly be considered a Conspiracy Theory. In the case of the 1971 revelation of the FBI's COINTELPRO counter-intelligence work against domestic political activists, it is not clear to what extent a 'conspiracy theory' involving government agents was either proposed or dismissed prior to the programme's factual exposure.

Falsifiability

Karl Popper argued that science is written as a set of falsifiable hypotheses; metaphysical or unscientific theories and claims are those which do not admit any possibility for falsification. Critics of conspiracy theories sometimes argue that many of them are not falsifiable and so cannot be scientific. This accusation is often accurate, and is a necessary consequence of the logical structure of certain kinds of conspiracy theories. These take the form of uncircumscribed existential statements, alleging the existence of some action or object without specifying the place or time at which it can be observed. Failure to observe the phenomenon can then always be the result of looking in the wrong place or looking at the wrong time — that is, having been duped by the conspiracy. This makes impossible any demonstration that the conspiracy does not exist.

In response to this objection to conspiracy theory, some argue that no political or historical theory can be scientific by Popper's criterion because none reliably generate testable predictions. In fact, Popper himself rejected the claims of Marxism and psychoanalysis to scientific status on precisely this basis. This does not necessarily mean that either conspiracy theory, Marxism, or psychoanalysis are baseless, irrational, and false; it does suggest that if they are false there is no way to prove it .

Falsifiability has been widely criticised for misrepresenting the actual process of scientific discovery by a number of scholars, notably paradigm theorist and Popper's former students Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Imre Lakatos. Within epistemological circles, falsifiability is not now considered a tenable criterion for determining scientific status, although it remains popular.


Conspiracy theory and urban legends

The overlap between conspiracy theory and urban legend is considerable: one need only consult American supermarket tabloids such as the Weekly World News to see prominent examples of both. Many urban legends, particularly those which touch on governments and businesses, exhibit some but not all of the features of conspiracy theory.

For instance, during the 1980s the accusation that the Procter & Gamble company was affiliated with Satanism was a viable urban legend. Does it also constitute a conspiracy theory? It did allege secretive and presumably harmful action (support of Satanism) on the part of a group (Procter & Gamble, or its leadership). However, it lacked the compelling historic ramifications typical of a full-fledged conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theory in fiction

Main article: Conspiracy theories (fictional)

Conspiracies are a popular theme in several genres of fiction, notably thrillers and science fiction, primarily due to their dramatic potential: recasting complex or meaningless historical events into relatively simple morality plays, in which bad people are the cause of bad events, and good people face the relatively simple task of identifying and defeating them. Compared to the subtlety and complexity of more rigorous sociological or historical accounts of events, conspiracy theory makes for a neat and intuitive narrative. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that the English word "plot" applies to both a story, and the activities of conspirators.

Conspiracy Theory is a 1997 thriller about a taxi driver (played by Mel Gibson) who publishes a newsletter in which he discusses what he suspects are government conspiracies.

Notes

  1. "Conspiracism," Political Research Associates, (accessed June 7, 2005).
  2. "Who shot the president?," The British Psychological Society , March 18, 2003 (accessed June 7, 2005).
  3. "Anti-Semitism," 1911 Online Encyclopedia, (accessed June 7, 2005).
  4. Ivan Emke, "Agents and Structures: Journalists and the Constraints on AIDS Coverage," Canadian Journal of Communication 25, no. 3 (2000), (accessed June 7, 2005).
  5. "Top 5 New Diseases: Media Induced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (MIPTSD)," The New Disease: A Journal of Narrative Pathology 2 (2004), (accessed June 7, 2005).

Further reading

  • Barkun, Michael. 2003. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: Univ. of California. ISBN 0520238052
  • Chase, Alston. 2003. Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, New York, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393020029
  • Fenster, Mark. 1999. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Gerald Posner. 1993. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, New York, The Random House. ISBN 0385474466
  • Goldberg, Robert Alan. 2001. Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 030009000
  • Hofstadter, Richard. 1965. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0674654617
  • Melley, Timothy. 1999. Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801486068
  • Mintz, Frank P. 1985. The Liberty Lobby and the American Right: Race, Conspiracy, and Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ISBN 031324393X
  • Pipes, Daniel. 1997. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0684871114
  • ---. 1998. The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy. New York, St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312176880
  • Popper, Karl. 1945. The Open Society & Its Enemies. London: Routledge & Sons.
  • Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House. ISBN 039453512X
  • Vankin, Jonathan, and John Whalen. 2004. The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, New York, Citadel Press. ISBN 0806525312

See also


The following pages are in the process of being merged into a more coherent and less redundant set:

Regularly produce allegations of conspiracies

Jordan Maxwell | David Icke | John Birch Society | Liberty Lobby (defunct) | Lyndon LaRouche | Alex Jones | Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde | Juhan af Grann | Craig Hill | Stanley Hilton | Michael Ruppert | David Ray Griffin |

Conspiracy theories by topic or main figure

AIDS and HIV | Alternative 3 | Anti-Christian calendar theory | Anti-globalization and Anti-Semitism | Moon hoax | Atlantis | Bible-related | Black helicopter conspiracy theory | Bush family conspiracy theory | Columbine conspiracy theories | Council on Foreign Relations | Elvis sightings | Epsilon Team | Face on Mars | Francis E. Dec | Fnord | Freemason conspiracy theories | Gladio secret army | Government Warehouse | Holocaust revisionism | Illuminati | Jesuits | Knights Templar | Majestic 12 | Men in Black | Mysticism | NESARA (National Economic Security And Reformation Act) | New World Order | Nick Berg conspiracy theories | Oil imperialism | Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories | Opus Dei | Philadelphia Experiment | Polybius  | Protosciences | Pseudosciences | Rennes le Château | Roswell UFO Incident | Round table groups | SARS conspiracy theory | UFO conspiracy theory | Unknown Superiors | Zionist/Jewish world domination conspiracy  | The Protocols of the Elders of Zion  | 9/11 conspiracy theories |

Assassination

Mohandas Gandhi | Pope John Paul I | Petra Kelly | George Patton | John F. Kennedy | Robert F. Kennedy  | Abraham Lincoln | Malcolm X | Martin Luther King Jr. | Enrico Mattei | Lee Harvey Oswald | Olof Palme | Salvador Allende | John Lennon | Hale Boggs | Yitzhak Rabin | John F. Kennedy, Jr. | Huey Long | Zachary Taylor | Paul Wellstone |

Celebrity deaths

Celebrity deaths other than assassinations: Elvis Presley | Jim Morrison | Diana, Princess of Wales | Marilyn Monroe | Bob Marley | Peter Tosh | Kurt Cobain | Tupac Shakur | Notorious B.I.G. | Hunter S. Thompson | Andy Kaufman

External links

World Wide Web links

Links critical of conspiracism

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