Introduction to Conspiracy Theories
The most pressing issue in this topic, the one that we have to introduce first, is "what is a conspiracy theory." Like the famous dictum regarding pornography, as said by Justice Stewart in Jacobellis v. Stewart (378 US 184) it's hard to define but we know it when we see it. It is quite easy to dismiss the crazy man with the megaphone screaming about aliens and the Illuminati, or the woman yelling about how vaccines are a form of mind control. Those are the obvious cases, the easy to identify.
What's more difficult are the cases in which the conspiracy is subtle, doesn't advocate for secret societies, space aliens, or interdimensional alien lizard people. If one person is trying to convince you that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, it's easy to dismiss that. However, if the same person begins saying that the Democratic National Party conspired to rig the primary election against Bernie Sanders, well that's not so obvious. Just as how easy it is to laugh at a person like Gwyneth Paltrow selling Jade vagina eggs but then walk into the pharmacy looking for naturopathic medicine. Make no mistake, the latter subjects both fall to the same problems and are both based on conspiracy reasoning.
In order to begin this task we must divide conspiracy theories into categories. This will allow us to find some kind of essential principle which underlies both. The first division is between "globalist conspiracies" and "academic conspiracies."
"Globalist" theories are those that claim hidden motives behind world events. 9/11, JFK, Titanic, Gun Control, are all globalist theories. While possible unique to the American political landscape, they still postulate a global control over events. Foreign include the Reichstag fire, the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and Holocaust. In these cases (including the first four), the general claim is that the official story is a lie, a cover for the real event. In some cases the claim is that the real event never occurred (Titanic, Sandy Hook) in others that the real event was not as important as reported (Holocaust), and still in others that the event happened but not as reported (i.e. that the Charlie Hebdo shooting was perpetrated to frame Muslim extremists, or that JFK was not assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald). The motive behind these theories is that the official story is designed to keep us content and happy with the status quo while at the same time pushing a hidden sinister agenda.
"Academic" theories are those which are claiming a concealing of a knowledge or discovery underneath the guise of a "textbook" story. The two different theories, of course, share that. However, with academic theories the thing being hidden is not a world event but something that is nearly purely academic. The theory that aliens built the Pyramids (among other structures throughout the world), that the Chinese Navy landed in California in 1421, that various governments have had contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence; are all academic conspiracies. This theory postulates that, for our own benefit, the experts/authorities have decided to keep the "truth" from us because we, as a public, could not handle it. In a number of these cases, the conspiracies are promulgated by amateurs in the respective fields or ex-professionals who are at odds with the current consensus.
There is, obviously, significant overlap between the two. Some academic conspiracists claim that there is a cabal of elites in the field seeking to suppress the knowledge they have uncovered. Globalists, throw in the academic conspiracies as part of cogs in the great wheel of world control. After all, what self-respecting secret society would operate the world without making sure that the school kids do not learn of the Chinese discovery of the New World or that Shakespeare was a fraud? Similarly, what kind of academic institution would dare let some upstart amateur design a car engine that runs on tap water without slandering that individual into silence?
What both theories have in common is that they postulate large groups of people exercising a control over the world. Academic theories have their cabals just as Globalist theories have theirs. The difference between them is merely accidental, as the Academic theories can point to the elites lurking in University departments or on the editorial staff of newspapers and television stations. Globalists cannot do that, they can identify names: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Illuminati, Freemason; and they can identify suspects: presidents, prime ministers, royalty; but they can never point to one individual who has made an admittance of it, with the exception of singer Katy Perry who in the August 2014 issue of Rolling Stone said that she wanted to be in the Illuminati.
The control over the world, or at least a part of it, is the essential part of a conspiracy theory. The theory doesn't work if that control doesn't exist. How many different people needed to act in concert to frame Lee Harvey Oswald of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or to fake the Apollo Moon Landing? The same question applies to Academic theories: how many people are necessary to suppress the "fact" that the world is flat? If true, those in control would be able to manipulate and direct hundreds, if not thousands of people.
Other features apply as well. For instance Boym (1999) argues that there must be a narrative that the theory must feature. This is definitely a feature of the globalist theory, where in the entire swathe of history is a series of events orchestrated to some goal. With academic conspiracies this is less clear. Claiming that the world is round, as our education has taught us for the last several thousand years, does not fit into a narrative. Even when prize foundations of understanding are overthrown, such as Einstein pushing over Newtonian physics, the story doesn't change. There isn't an old narrative that the conservative scientists were holding on to for the sake of the narrative itself. While there were debates about the new theory, it eventually subsided when the new theory bore out its conclusions.
To conclude the nature of a conspiracy theory is to postulate a control over the actions, and indeed thoughts, of the populace. Without this defining trait, a conspiracy theory loses any kind of motive necessary for the hypothetical actors within it.
Citations:
Boym, Svetlana; Conspiracy Theories and Literary Ethics: Umberto Eco, Danilo Kis, and the Protocols of Zion 1999
What's more difficult are the cases in which the conspiracy is subtle, doesn't advocate for secret societies, space aliens, or interdimensional alien lizard people. If one person is trying to convince you that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, it's easy to dismiss that. However, if the same person begins saying that the Democratic National Party conspired to rig the primary election against Bernie Sanders, well that's not so obvious. Just as how easy it is to laugh at a person like Gwyneth Paltrow selling Jade vagina eggs but then walk into the pharmacy looking for naturopathic medicine. Make no mistake, the latter subjects both fall to the same problems and are both based on conspiracy reasoning.
In order to begin this task we must divide conspiracy theories into categories. This will allow us to find some kind of essential principle which underlies both. The first division is between "globalist conspiracies" and "academic conspiracies."
"Globalist" theories are those that claim hidden motives behind world events. 9/11, JFK, Titanic, Gun Control, are all globalist theories. While possible unique to the American political landscape, they still postulate a global control over events. Foreign include the Reichstag fire, the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and Holocaust. In these cases (including the first four), the general claim is that the official story is a lie, a cover for the real event. In some cases the claim is that the real event never occurred (Titanic, Sandy Hook) in others that the real event was not as important as reported (Holocaust), and still in others that the event happened but not as reported (i.e. that the Charlie Hebdo shooting was perpetrated to frame Muslim extremists, or that JFK was not assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald). The motive behind these theories is that the official story is designed to keep us content and happy with the status quo while at the same time pushing a hidden sinister agenda.
"Academic" theories are those which are claiming a concealing of a knowledge or discovery underneath the guise of a "textbook" story. The two different theories, of course, share that. However, with academic theories the thing being hidden is not a world event but something that is nearly purely academic. The theory that aliens built the Pyramids (among other structures throughout the world), that the Chinese Navy landed in California in 1421, that various governments have had contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence; are all academic conspiracies. This theory postulates that, for our own benefit, the experts/authorities have decided to keep the "truth" from us because we, as a public, could not handle it. In a number of these cases, the conspiracies are promulgated by amateurs in the respective fields or ex-professionals who are at odds with the current consensus.
There is, obviously, significant overlap between the two. Some academic conspiracists claim that there is a cabal of elites in the field seeking to suppress the knowledge they have uncovered. Globalists, throw in the academic conspiracies as part of cogs in the great wheel of world control. After all, what self-respecting secret society would operate the world without making sure that the school kids do not learn of the Chinese discovery of the New World or that Shakespeare was a fraud? Similarly, what kind of academic institution would dare let some upstart amateur design a car engine that runs on tap water without slandering that individual into silence?
What both theories have in common is that they postulate large groups of people exercising a control over the world. Academic theories have their cabals just as Globalist theories have theirs. The difference between them is merely accidental, as the Academic theories can point to the elites lurking in University departments or on the editorial staff of newspapers and television stations. Globalists cannot do that, they can identify names: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Illuminati, Freemason; and they can identify suspects: presidents, prime ministers, royalty; but they can never point to one individual who has made an admittance of it, with the exception of singer Katy Perry who in the August 2014 issue of Rolling Stone said that she wanted to be in the Illuminati.
The control over the world, or at least a part of it, is the essential part of a conspiracy theory. The theory doesn't work if that control doesn't exist. How many different people needed to act in concert to frame Lee Harvey Oswald of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or to fake the Apollo Moon Landing? The same question applies to Academic theories: how many people are necessary to suppress the "fact" that the world is flat? If true, those in control would be able to manipulate and direct hundreds, if not thousands of people.
Other features apply as well. For instance Boym (1999) argues that there must be a narrative that the theory must feature. This is definitely a feature of the globalist theory, where in the entire swathe of history is a series of events orchestrated to some goal. With academic conspiracies this is less clear. Claiming that the world is round, as our education has taught us for the last several thousand years, does not fit into a narrative. Even when prize foundations of understanding are overthrown, such as Einstein pushing over Newtonian physics, the story doesn't change. There isn't an old narrative that the conservative scientists were holding on to for the sake of the narrative itself. While there were debates about the new theory, it eventually subsided when the new theory bore out its conclusions.
To conclude the nature of a conspiracy theory is to postulate a control over the actions, and indeed thoughts, of the populace. Without this defining trait, a conspiracy theory loses any kind of motive necessary for the hypothetical actors within it.
Citations:
Boym, Svetlana; Conspiracy Theories and Literary Ethics: Umberto Eco, Danilo Kis, and the Protocols of Zion 1999
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