who allegedly also built the pyramids.16 The conspiracist tendency to link together disparate phenomena leads to assumptions that defy all probability.
Another example often cited in support of the claim that many conspiracy theories later turn out to be true is Watergate. Before the first arrests were made in that case, however, there were no suspicions at all, that is to say, no theories, surrounding Nixon or his staff. And once the inquiry was underway, all parties – from the members of the Senate Committee investigating the affair to the investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – were extremely careful not to voice suspicions that could not be proven. The well-documented revelations concerning this scandal are therefore a world apart from the still unproven claims of conspiracy theorists that the official version of events was either just the tip of the iceberg or a clever diversionary tactic. They connected Nixon with the mafia, saw him as the victim of a CIA plot, and regarded the whole thing as just one piece in a superconspiracy puzzle encompassing practically every event in recent American history.17
The Watergate affair thus provides further confirmation that the extensive scenarios put forward by conspiracy theorists are inconsistent with reality. If the American president – commonly dubbed the most powerful man in the world – cannot even spy on his political opponents at their party offices without it becoming public and leading to his eventual resignation, how can anyone be supposed capable of faking the moon landing, 9/11 or the refugee crisis and keeping it secret for years or even decades? Hence, conspiracy theories are indeed usually wrong. Any account of events that deems everything to be planned and leaves no room for chance, contingency and structural effects cannot adequately comprehend reality. Thus, as Quassim Cassam puts it, ‘Conspiracy Theories are implausible by design.’18
The term as a means of delegitimization
As we have seen, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ refers to a specific understanding of the world that assumes that everything has been planned, that everything is connected and that nothing is as it seems. At the same time, when people call something a conspiracy theory, they usually imply that it is wrong. The label thus denotes a set of specific characteristics, and it entails an evaluation. This duality has been inherent in the term since Karl Popper first used it in its modern sense. As Andrew McKenzie-McHarg has shown, the expression ‘conspiracy theory’ already existed in the late nineteenth century, but had a different meaning until Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies.19 Initially, a conspiracy theory was – along with suicide or murder theories – one of the possibilities considered by investigators whenever a body was found and the cause of death was unclear. In this context, the term simply meant that it was deemed conceivable that the victim had been murdered by more than one perpetrator, thus fulfilling the legal definition of a conspiracy. Since Popper’s openly derogatory statements on the ‘conspiracy theory of society’, however, it has been used to refer to the large-scale scenarios discussed above, in order to both capture their characteristics and to suggest that they are without substance. Thus, as Peter Knight stresses, ‘The term “conspiracy theory” often acts as an insult itself … Calling something a conspiracy theory is not infrequently enough to end discussion.’20
Consequently, it is always other people who articulate ‘conspiracy theories’. Nobody is more aware of the stigma attached to the term than those to whom it is most usually applied. Occasionally, they react by appropriating the concept and claiming that those branded conspiracy theorists by the mainstream are the truly enlightened ones. Or they may avoid it when it comes to their own suspicions, yet use it to discredit allegations directed against themselves or those who share their world view. This tactic is known as reverse labelling. You use the same label that others seek to pin on you, dismissing their accusations as conspiracy theories while at the same time presenting your own suspicions as justified and all but proven. ‘Who is the one spreading conspiracy theories here?’, the former German newsreader Eva Herman asks rhetorically in an article on the refugee crisis which draws on the conspiracy theory of the ‘Great Replacement’, i.e. the idea that an international financial elite is engaged in a plot to replace Europe’s Christian population with a Muslim one. To her and those who believe her, the answer to her question is of course obvious: the puppet politicians and the lying press are spreading conspiracy theories, while she is telling the truth.21
Similarly, the authors and commentators on the right-wing populist American website breitbart.com, whose former editor-in-chief Steve Bannon was one of President Trump’s top advisers for a time, have attempted ever since Trump’s election to dismiss as a conspiracy theory the well-founded suspicion that the Kremlin sought to influence the polls. At the same time, however, the site produces an endless stream of accusations of its own which others would call conspiracy theories. Users commenting on, for instance, an article of 12 December 2016 about the Russia affair agreed with the author that the whole thing was a conspiracy theory put about by the Democrats, yet many of them promptly went on to make counter-accusations – naturally without applying the term to their own case. Comments included an urgent call for Trump to investigate the billionaire George Soros, accusing him of undermining democracy in the USA with his ‘187 radical organizations’.22
Given its negative associations, it is hardly surprising that there is a conspiracy theory about the term ‘conspiracy theory’. If you google ‘origin term conspiracy theory’, you will find precious little about Karl Popper, but countless pages claiming that the CIA invented the term to discredit those who doubt the official version of the Kennedy assassination. Again and again, CIA memo 1035–960 from 1967 is cited by way of evidence. Contrary to common claims, however, this memo was not made public only recently, but as early as 1976, as can be gleaned from the document itself. And more importantly, the memo does not prove the theory about the term’s invention. It merely provides arguments refuting the conspiracy theories – already popular at the time – surrounding the Kennedy assassination. The document states that ‘Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization’, and goes on to say: ‘The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists.’ However problematic we may find this, the use of the terms ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ without further definition or explanation shows they were obviously already in everyday use when the memo was written, and not coined by its authors.23
Even if the term ‘conspiracy theory’ was not invented in order to discredit undesirable alternative versions of events, there is nevertheless no doubt that this is one of its main functions in everyday speech. In his book Conspiracy Panics (Conspiracy Theory Panics would have been a more appropriate title), Jack Bratich therefore rejects the rationale of most academics – which I too espouse in this book – and calls for an alternative approach. For Bratich, the concept of the conspiracy theory is not characterized by the duality between definable characteristics that allow a neutral use of the term, and stigmatization, which stands in the way of such a use. To him, it is purely and simply a means of stigmatization and thus delegitimization.24
Bratich is strongly influenced by Michel Foucault’s idea that power generates knowledge and not vice versa, since it is ultimately those in positions of power who determine what does or does not constitute knowledge. Therefore, Bratich argues, it is impossible to determine on the basis of identifying characteristics – a group acting in secret, an evil plan, etc. – what a conspiracy theory is or is not. Rather, the term is used in common parlance as a way of discrediting a certain idea: ‘In other words, the question is no longer, “what is a conspiracy theory?” but “what counts as a conspiracy theory?”’ According to Bratich, the term is a weapon used to denounce certain views as illegitimate and false. No more, but also no less.25
It is true that ideas are often vilified as conspiracy theories even if they don’t have any of the characteristics described at the beginning of this chapter. Not every opponent of vaccination is a conspiracy theorist in the sense that
