Conspiracy Theories

Quassim Cassam

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781509535842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

9/11 was an inside job. The Holocaust is a myth promoted to serve Jewish interests. The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were a false flag operation. Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government. These are all conspiracy theories. A glance online or at bestseller lists reveals how popular some of them are. Even if there is plenty of evidence to disprove them, people persist in propagating them. Why? Philosopher Quassim Cassam explains how conspiracy theories are different from ordinary theories about conspiracies. He argues that conspiracy theories are forms of propaganda and their function is to promote a political agenda. Although conspiracy theories are sometimes defended on the grounds that they uncover evidence of bad behaviour by political leaders, they do much more harm than good, with some resulting in the deaths of large numbers of people. There can be no clearer indication that something has gone wrong with our intellectual and political culture than the fact that conspiracy theories have become mainstream. When they are dangerous, we cannot afford to ignore them. At the same time, refuting them by rational argument is difficult because conspiracy theorists discount or reject evidence that disproves their theories. As conspiracy theoriesare so often smokescreens for political ends, we need to come up with political as well as intellectual responses if we are to have any hope of defeating them.

1
The (Real) Point of Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theorists get a seriously bad press. Gullible, irresponsible, paranoid, stupid. These are some of the politer labels applied to them, usually by establishment figures who aren’t averse to promoting their own conspiracy theories when it suits them. President George W. Bush denounced outrageous conspiracy theories about 9/11 while his own administration was busy promoting the outrageous conspiracy theory that Iraq was behind 9/11, in cahoots with Al Qaeda.

If the abuse isn’t bad enough, conspiracy theorists now have the dubious privilege of being studied by psychologists. The psychology of conspiracy theories is a thing, and the news for conspiracy theorists isn’t good. A recent study describes their theories as corrosive to societal and individual well-being.¹ Conspiracy theorists, the study reveals, are more likely to be male, unmarried, and less educated, to have lower household incomes, and to see themselves as being of low social standing. They have lower levels of physical and psychological well-being and are more likely to meet the criteria for having a psychiatric disorder.

In case you’re starting to feel sorry for conspiracy theorists (or for yourself, if you are one), perhaps it’s worth remembering that they aren’t exactly shrinking violets. They are vociferous defenders of their theories and scornful of their opponents. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of the wrath of conspiracy theorists will know that it can be a bruising experience. I have the honour of being described by one eminent (if that’s the right word) conspiracy theorist and fellow philosopher as a ‘bona fide anti-conspiracy buffoon’.²

And yet, on reflection, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, if a conspiracy theorist is someone who believes in the existence of some conspiracies, then surely in that sense we are all conspiracy theorists. History is full of well-documented conspiracies and one would have to be remarkably ignorant not to realise that. Michael Moore once said that he wasn’t into conspiracy theories ‘except the ones that are true’.³ Realistically, isn’t that actually the position we’re all in? Surely what we should be debating is not whether there is anything wrong with conspiracy theories per se, but whether there is anything wrong with specific conspiracy theories.

According to the 9/11 conspiracy theorist James Fetzer (that’s the guy who thinks I’m an anti-conspiracy buffoon), for something to qualify as a ‘conspiracy’, it only requires two or more people who collaborate to perpetrate an illegal act. There are a couple of important things missing from this definition: conspiracies are supposed to be secret and, because of that, they involve a small group of people – the conspirators. A conspiracy requires a small group of conspirators who work together in secret to do something illegal or harmful.

This is the sense of ‘conspiracy’ according to which history has always been full of conspiracies. Suppose that a conspiracy theory is defined as a theory about a conspiracy. In that case, history books are full of conspiracy theories. They tell us, for example, that Guy Fawkes and his colleagues plotted to blow up the English parliament in 1605. The plot was a conspiracy by Fetzer’s definition and mine, and historical accounts of the plot are therefore conspiracy theories.

You don’t have to go back to 1605 for examples of conspiracy theories. There are lots of conspiracy theories about 9/11, the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 – and I don’t just mean theories to the effect that the Bush administration or Iraq was behind them. By the definition of ‘conspiracy theory’ I’ve just given, the official account of 9/11, as set out in the official report of the 9/11 Commission, is also a conspiracy theory. That account says that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by nineteen Al Qaeda operatives who collaborated in secret to do something immensely harmful to the United States government and to thousands of its citizens. That’s a conspiracy in anyone’s money.

So it seems that, if you believe the official account of 9/11, then you’re a conspiracy theorist. And if you don’t believe the official account, you’re still a conspiracy theorist. Either way you’re a conspiracy theorist; and pretty much everyone else is one too. In that case, how can there be a debate about whether one should be a conspiracy theorist, that is, believe that conspiracies happen?

What’s more, if many conspiracy theories are true, then how can it possibly be corrosive to societal and individual well-being to be a conspiracy theorist, to believe that some conspiracy theories are true? If we are all conspiracy theorists, then it doesn’t make sense to say that conspiracy theorists are less educated (than whom?) or more likely to meet the criteria for having a psychiatric disorder. That would be absurd, and the ‘psychology of conspiracy theories’ is starting to look like a total waste of time.

But here’s the thing: when people argue about conspiracy theories, they aren’t arguing about whether individuals have ever collaborated in secret to perpetrate illegal acts. The conspiracy theories that people actually argue about are different from ordinary tales of conspiracy. In the ordinary sense of ‘conspiracy theory’, the official account of 9/11 isn’t a conspiracy theory. The theory that 9/11 was an inside job is. The theory that in 1605 Guy Fawkes and others conspired to blow up the English parliament in the Gunpowder Plot isn’t a conspiracy theory. The theory that the Holocaust is a myth concocted to serve Jewish interests is.

So what’s the difference? As it happens, there is a sound rationale for being selective in applying the label ‘conspiracy theory’. As conspiracy theory expert Rob Brotherton points out, ‘when people call something a conspiracy theory, they’re usually not talking about just any old conspiracy’.⁴ Conspiracy theories in the ordinary sense are extraordinary. They have a bunch of special features that make them different from accounts of conspiracies like the Gunpowder Plot.

To avoid confusion, I’ll call these extraordinary theories ‘Conspiracy Theories’ with a capital C and a capital T. A Conspiracy Theory isn’t just a theory about a conspiracy. There is more to it than that. A Conspiracy Theorist, again with a capital C and a capital T, is a person who is ‘into’ Conspiracy Theories, that is, unusually fascinated by them and more willing than most to believe them. We are all conspiracy theorists – we all believe that people sometimes get together in secret to do bad things – but we aren’t all Conspiracy Theorists.

I don’t have a problem with conspiracy theories but I do have a problem with many Conspiracy Theories. Here’s one problem: given the features that make them special, they’re unlikely to be true. Conspiracy Theories are implausible by design. Sometimes implausible theories turn out to be true, but it isn’t usually sensible to believe that they are true. So it isn’t usually sensible to be a Conspiracy Theorist. It’s no defence to point out that history books are full of tales of conspiracy because, for the most part, these tales aren’t Conspiracy Theories in the special sense that I’m talking about.

If Conspiracy Theories are unlikely to be true and some of them – such as the theory that the Holocaust is a myth – have been conclusively refuted, then what’s their point? What purpose do Conspiracy Theories serve, if not to tell the truth? And why do people continue to peddle Conspiracy Theories that have virtually no chance of being true? Because Conspiracy Theories are first and foremost forms of political propaganda. They are political gambits whose real function is to promote a political agenda. They aren’t ‘just theories’ like any other.

Which political agenda? Sometimes it’s not that obvious, but there are lots of examples of Conspiracy Theories whose political agenda you don’t have to be a genius to work out. For example, the point of Conspiracy Theories about the Holocaust is to advance the cause of right-wing anti-Semitism. What these theories are about is exonerating the Nazis and portraying ‘the Jews’ in as negative a light as possible.

Here’s another example, from recent history. Back in 2012 Adam Lanza murdered twenty students and six members of staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. It wasn’t long before Conspiracy Theorists started to claim that the whole episode was an elaborate hoax by the government, a classic false flag operation in which no one died. Why would the government want to do such a thing? To push the case for gun control.

If that sounds like a reasonable thing to believe, then the following is no less reasonable: Lanza really did shoot twenty-six people at Sandy Hook, and that was a potential problem for the gun lobby. What better way to pre-empt calls for tighter gun control in the wake of a mass shooting at an elementary school than to claim that the shooting never happened? Take the original Conspiracy Theory, reverse-engineer it, and now it all makes sense: the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory is a blatant piece of political propaganda designed to divert attention from the real problem: the absence of effective gun control in the United States.

This sounds like a conspiracy theory (or should that be Conspiracy Theory?) about Conspiracy Theories: Conspiracy Theories are part of a conspiracy to advance right-wing political causes. But if my theory is a conspiracy theory, then Conspiracy Theorists shouldn’t have a problem with it. There are conspiracy theories about just about everything, so why not conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories and the people who advertise them?

The truth is even more complicated. Saying that Conspiracy Theories about Sandy Hook and other such events are pieces of political propaganda makes it sound as though the peddling of such theories is a conscious and deliberate strategy designed to advance a political cause, the implication being that Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theorists are deliberately spreading what they know to be falsehoods in order to manipulate public opinion.

Even if that implication is true, it’s still not a Conspiracy Theory unless the people who manipulate public opinion by spreading falsehoods are working together. I haven’t said anything about that. For all I’ve said, the spreading of Conspiracy Theories could be the work of individual conspiracy entrepreneurs who happen to have the same political objective. If these conspiracy entrepreneurs aren’t collaborating, then by definition there is no conspiracy. But there’s also a subtler reason for not going for a straightforward conspiracy theory about Conspiracy Theories.

The subtler reason is that a claim can be propaganda even if the people making it believe that it’s true. Imagine a hypothetical Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theorist who really believes that the whole thing was a fals...