Conspiracy Theories - The Basics
According to a recent poll in the German newspaper Die Zeit, one in five Germans believes that the U.S. government may have sponsored the 9-11 attacks. Among those under 30, the proportion is one in three. Conspiracy theories as insane as that one, or worse, currently corrupt the political thinking of the great majority of people in the world, including a substantial and influential minority in the West.
A conspiracy theory is
* an explanation of observed events in current affairs and history - which
* alleges that those events were planned and caused in secret by powerful (or allegedly powerful) conspirators, who thereby?
* benefit at the expense of others, and who therefore?
* lie, and suppress evidence, about their secret actions, and?
* lie about the motives for their public actions.
Conspiracy theories are widely regarded as characteristic of irrational modes of thinking. The very term "conspiracy theory" is usually reserved for irrational explanations meeting the above criteria. For conspiracies do happen. Criminal conspiracies are proved every day in courts. Political conspiracies are discovered from time to time. If we can rationally explain a bank robbery as being the consequence of a conspiracy, why not a war? Or the world economic system? What distinguishes a conspiracy theory (irrational, by definition) from a sane opinion that a particular group of people worked in secret to bring about certain observed events for their own immoral purposes?
Here, the irrefutability of conspiracy theories is usually cited: to a conspiracy theorist, everything that happens, or could possibly happen, constitutes evidence for the conspiracy. If the alleged conspirators seem to benefit, then that is evidence against them. If they do not, then that is just evidence that the media and/or other conspirators are concealing the facts, or that something much more valuable is secretly at stake.
But there is more to it than irrefutability. There is more to it even than the tendency to invent (rather than merely reinterpret) evidence to conform to the conspiracy theory. For it is no coincidence that every (irrational) conspiracy theory is in fact false. Underlying their invalid arguments and mishandling of evidence in judging explanations, there is a pathological mistake in the conspiracy theorists? conception of what constitutes an explanation in the first place.
Here's a fairly classic conspiracy theory. It is that the Bush Administration's foreign policy is part of a plot to impose Fascism on America. We don't especially recommend reading it (unless you are entertained by that sort of thing) but look at this passage:
I will examine exactly what the Bush Administration in fact stands for, which is in stark contrast to the claims of Bush's mindless chorus of fawning acolytes.This "stark contrast" between the conspirators' purported motives and their real motives is at the heart of every political conspiracy theory. For if a conspiracy theory is to explain observed events in current affairs and history, the conspirators? hidden actions must somehow be translated into something significant and visible, a war, a major change in the law, the enrichment of some group and the impoverishment of another, which requires visible actions and efforts by large numbers of people. If, for whatever reason, the real objective of those efforts cannot be acknowledged openly, then many of those people must believe that they are furthering some different objective.
Now, consider a person who favours that ostensible objective and works towards it, but opposes the conspirators? true objective. Such a person is a dupe of the conspirators. Conspiracy theorists always believe in the existence of dupes because they see themselves as desperately warning them to open their eyes and see what would be "blinding" in its clarity? if they did; but also, the alleged conspiracy itself usually depends on the cooperation of many dupes, such as journalists and political commentators ("Bush's mindless chorus of fawning acolytes") and soldiers and civil servants and of course ordinary voters.
It is in the interests of the conspirators to enlist as many dupes as possible. Every lie the conspirators tell, every secret meeting they hold, every secret decision they take and every secret message they share, incurs a risk of exposure. Therefore, the more dupes are willing to further the aims of the conspiracy without having to participate in the secret planning and without having to conceal their real reasons for supporting the plans, the safer the secret is. Also, the more dupes spontaneously work hard on the conspirators? behalf without wanting a payoff, the fewer real conspirators are needed to achieve the objective. And if there are spoils (there usually are!) the larger the share each conspirator will receive.
So there are lots of dupes. But the question arises: are there any politicians among them?
It is in the nature of conspiracy theories that there is no immediate way of telling. Since the conspiracy depends on the conspirators behaving, in public, exactly as if they were dupes, it must be true that any duped politicians would be behaving in public exactly as if they were conspirators: arguing for the policy, voting for it, trying to discredit its opponents, cutting deals to promote it and so on.
You can see where this is going, can't you? How high are the dupes allowed to rise? For all we know, even some of the highest-ranking Neo-Cons are dupes. Even some members of the Cabinet might be outside the Conspiracy and genuinely be motivated by the arguments and objectives they advance in public.
Could the President himself be a dupe? If he was lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction then he was a Conspirator, and of course nothing could ever prove that he wasn't. But there again, there is no evidence that he was lying.
The fact is, all supporters of the Administration's policy could be "dupes", or rather, honest holders of the opinions they purport to hold" and still behave exactly as we see them behave. In other words, if there were no conspiracy there at all, we'd never know.
Well, obviously.
And therefore, the conspiracy theory explains exactly nothing. Yet it appends layers of weirdness and complexity to the commonsense picture of the world. There is an unlimited supply of such (non-)explanations, all postulating invisible complexity and all contradicting each other. Even if one of them were true, it would be vanishingly unlikely that anyone would happen to hit on it by a method that was impervious to evidence.
That is one reason why, in practice, conspiracy theories are always false.
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