the fatal consequences of vaccination from the public, or even to use it to manipulate or subdue the population. All too often, however, the term is used indiscriminately to denigrate anyone with a critical attitude to vaccination.
Conversely, there are ideas and claims which exhibit the characteristics of a conspiracy theory, but are not described as such – at least not initially – because those who promote them are powerful enough to control the discourse on the subject in question. One fateful example from the recent past was the claim by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden and that the two intended to act in concert to damage the USA. This may sound absurd in hindsight, but in 2003 a significant proportion of the US population genuinely believed it. The claim helped to legitimize the invasion of Iraq. And there is no doubt that it fits the definition of a conspiracy theory: it asserts that two evildoers – Saddam and Osama – and their underlings secretly collaborated in the pursuit of a deadly plan; in so doing, it links together disparate phenomena whose connection is not apparent to the neutral observer. Moreover, the claim was – as events were to prove – untrue.26
The example of the Iraq War also points to a problem in Bratich’s argument. He assumes that any phenomenon labelled a conspiracy theory always contradicts an official version. He is not alone in this: many scholars, including those who have no quarrel with the concept of the ‘conspiracy theory’, take a similar view. And it is true that most conspiracy theories advanced in the Western world in recent decades have been directed against an official narrative, that is, one that is subscribed to by elites, the media and the majority of the population. Yet for a time, the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein was secretly in cahoots with al-Qaida was itself the official version in the USA. And in other cultures, such as Eastern Europe and the Arab world, conspiracist suspicions are regularly voiced by elites and the established media. Indeed, many of the above examples show that, historically speaking, the idea that most conspiracy theories are directed against an official version is not borne out for Europe or North America either. There too, the claim that the state was threatened by a major plot was, until the middle of the twentieth century, often the official story.27
If we argue historically, a second problem comes into focus. According to the logic of Bratich’s strictly Foucauldian approach, conspiracy theories have only existed for as long as the term has been used in its modern sense, i.e. since the mid-twentieth century. If this is the case, what do we make of the obvious ‘conspiracy claims’ of past centuries? What about texts such as Samuel Morse’s anti-Catholic pamphlet Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States, which, like countless other examples from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offers far more than vague suspicions? This tract describes the alleged conspiracy in detail over hundreds of pages, supplies a wealth of ‘evidence’, and has many rhetorical, structural and ideological similarities with twenty-first-century books and videos such as the Loose Change films or David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor, both of which accuse the Bush administration of being behind the 9/11 attacks. Do we not lose more than we gain if we refuse to regard such a text as the articulation of a conspiracy theory?
For all of Bratich’s justifiable scepticism vis-à-vis the term ‘conspiracy theory’, its use does not have to be confined to the disqualification of unpopular claims. The term can still be used in a relatively neutral sense, since it is possible – as I have shown – to formulate criteria for deciding when it is and is not appropriate. The fact that it is often misused does not invalidate its use per se. And such a neutral use is even possible if one assumes, as I do, that conspiracy theories are usually false. In fact, many scholars across all disciplines are sceptical about the truth claims of the people and narratives they study – take, for example, scholars of religion, anthropologists or historians who study what previous ages regarded as valid knowledge.
Indeed, it is often precisely this sceptical attitude that allows scholars to identify the social causes and effects of the phenomena they are interested in. Had the historians Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum believed in the existence of witches, they would never have succeeded in demonstrating that the infamous witch trials of 1692 were triggered by an economic conflict in Salem Village.28 Whether we are dealing with witchcraft or conspiracy theories, it is crucial not to devalue or even pathologize the ideas in question. Nor should we make hasty generalizations about a ‘natural’ link between conspiracist thinking and political extremism or a tendency towards violence. The fact that such assumptions about conspiracy theories are, unfortunately, still made, not just in everyday discourse but also occasionally by academics, should oblige scholars to take extra care when using the term; it does not, however, make it impossible.
Conspiracy theories as theories
Jack Bratich’s study is the most theoretically advanced critique of the concept of ‘conspiracy theory’. He is by no means the only one keen to dispense with the term, however. Conspiracy theorists themselves reject it because they claim to be revealing the truth and not just spreading some theory or other. They understand the word theory in its conversational sense of ‘mere theorizing’ as opposed to practical experience and truth. Conversely, some scholars (exclusively German, interestingly enough) reject the term ‘conspiracy theory’ because, to them, theories are something noble and scientific and thus the very opposite of conspiracy theories. In their view, conspiracy theories use circular rather than systematic arguments and are ultimately irrefutable. For this reason, Armin Pfahl-Traughber prefers the term ‘conspiracy ideology’, a view shared by historian Wolfgang Wippermann. According to Pfahl-Traughber, this term is more appropriate because conspiracy theories, unlike scientific theories, are ‘not capable of being corrected by evidence to the contrary’, that is, they are not falsifiable; rather, they are ‘entrenched, monocausal and stereotypical attitudes’ displaying a ‘one-sided fixation’. Furthermore, conspiracy theories do not ‘reflect on the appropriateness of their fundamental assumptions’ but take them to be an ‘unalterable dogma’. Therefore, he concludes that the term ‘conspiracy theory’ should only be used in quotation marks, and that it is better to speak of ‘conspiracy ideologies’.29
This would only shift the problem elsewhere, however. Pfahl-Traughber clearly has a very traditional and accordingly narrow definition of ideology in mind, equating it with false consciousness in the Marxist sense. For him, it is possible and desirable to leave the ideology-led ‘misunderstanding’ of the world behind and progress to an ideology-free understanding of it. This is at odds with the prevailing view in cultural studies and the social sciences, however, which holds that there is no such thing as ideology-free knowledge. Our understanding of the world is always governed by basic assumptions that we do not question and are often barely aware of. Consequently, Pfahl-Traughber’s proposal wouldn’t solve the problem he identifies since, for many people, the term ‘ideology’ does not have the negative connotations he intends to convey.
Furthermore, although conspiracy theories differ from scientific theories in many respects, there are nonetheless certain similarities. The philosopher Karl Hepfer, for instance, insists that conspiracy theories, like scientific theories, provide answers to epistemological questions, thus allowing a ‘better understanding of the world’.30 While this understanding may be objectively false, in subjective terms conspiracy theories do what we expect of theories in general: they explain past events and allow predictions about the future. Thus, in her earlier-mentioned article on the ‘Great Replacement’, Eva Herman prophesies that the events unfolding in Europe, and especially Germany, will lead to a war between cultures and religions, native populations and migrants – a conclusion she derives from the logic of the evil plan and the conflicts it has allegedly already led to: ‘The unrest already occurring among the various religious cultures paints an ugly picture of the future.’ Churchill is less explicit on this point due to the brevity of his text. But his words, too, suggest an underlying fear that, having once secured Russia, the conspirators will turn to other countries, notably Britain.
Above all, however, the argument that conspiracy theories differ from
