they do for those who believe in them, and what their potential consequences may be. This is due not least to the fact that only one study on the subject has so far had any notable and lasting impact on public perception: Richard Hofstadter’s famous 1964 essay on the ‘paranoid style in American politics’.4 Even in the USA, where some dozen compelling books on the subject have been published since the 1990s, few in the media have yet come up with a response to Donald Trump’s daily flirtation with conspiracism that doesn’t refer to Hofstadter’s essay.
Hofstadter, one of the most respected historians of his time, saw belief in conspiracy theories as bordering on clinical paranoia. By the same token, he claimed that, in the USA, the tendency to see conspiracies everywhere had always been confined to a minority on the margins of society. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon.com, the New Republic and many other media outlets used Hofstadter’s terminology to characterize Trump, and to some extent they still do. Even Hillary Clinton made reference to Hofstadter on one of the rare occasions when she commented directly on Trump’s conspiracy theories. At a hustings in Reno, Nevada in August 2016, she accused Trump of exploiting prejudices and paranoia, and appealed to moderate Republicans to resist the takeover of their party by the radical fringe.5 Outside the USA, too, Hofstadter’s text is still the most influential analysis of conspiracy theories to date. German media such as Die Zeit or Die Welt for example have also drawn on it in an attempt to understand the Trump phenomenon. Nor are things any better when it comes to other conspiracy theories: writing in August 2018, for instance, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde accused the followers of Jeremy Corbyn of ‘do[ing] politics in the paranoid style’.6
Scholars who study conspiracy theories, however, have long since come to regard Hofstadter’s text as outdated. While he makes many valid points, his pathologization of conspiracy theorists as paranoid is highly problematic. Moreover, given that – according to the latest empirical studies – half of the population of the USA, and nearly as many in most European countries, believe in at least one conspiracy theory, it is also completely meaningless.7 Other aspects of Hofstadter’s argument have proved wrong, too. In short, when it comes to understanding what conspiracy theories are and how they work, neither our intuition nor the one study which has shaped the public understanding of the subject are of any help.
It is the purpose of this book to provide a more accurate account of conspiracy theories. By examining the underlying principles, functions, effects and history of conspiracist thinking, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon. Naturally, I focus on current developments, in particular the association of conspiracy theories with populist rhetoric, as well as the role of the internet in their dissemination. In order to make sense of the present, however, we need a historical perspective. After all, the history of conspiracy theories is also inevitably that of the changing public spheres in which they circulate, and of the media environments that shape them. If we want to understand how the internet – where counterpublics are formed so much more easily than outside the virtual environment, and where conspiracy theories can be continuously updated – influences the forms and functions of conspiracist suspicions, we need to know what things were like before: that is, what influence other media regimes exerted in earlier times.
The crux of my argument is that it is, above all, the status of conspiracy theories in public discourse that has changed most radically over time, and that it is now changing once again. Even if it might feel like it at times, we are not living in a golden age of conspiracy theories. It is not true that conspiracism is more popular and influential now than ever before. On the contrary: conspiracy theories are currently generating so much discussion precisely because they are still a stigmatized form of knowledge whose premises are regarded with extreme scepticism by many people. And therein lies the difference between past and present. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a perfectly legitimate form of knowledge whose underlying assumptions were beyond question. It was therefore normal to believe in them. Only after the Second World War did conspiracy theories begin to undergo a complex process of delegitimization in the USA and Europe, causing conspiracist knowledge to be banished from public discourse and relegated to the realm of subcultures.
On the one hand, the current ‘renaissance’ of conspiracy theories is partly connected with the rise of populist movements, in that there are structural parallels between populist and conspiracist arguments. On the other hand, the internet plays a key role because it has made conspiracy theories – which had flown under most people’s radar for a while – highly visible and easily available again. In addition, the internet has been a catalyst for the fragmentation of the public sphere. What we are experiencing now is a situation where conspiracy theories are still stigmatized in some domains – particularly those we continue to regard as mainstream – but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over such theories. While some people are fearful (once again) of conspiracies, others are (or remain) more concerned with the dire consequences of conspiracy theories. In this respect, you could say we are entering a third phase in the history of conspiracism. After the long period of widespread acceptance and the short one of complete stigmatization, we in the West are now living in a world where conspiracy theories are simultaneously legitimate and illegitimate knowledge. Everything that is currently discussed regarding these theories – who believes in them and why and to what effects – needs to be understood against this background.
In what follows, I develop this argument in six chapters, arranged in such a way that they can also be read in isolation or in a different order. In Chapter 1, I discuss various definitions and typologies of conspiracy theories, noting in particular that the term is not merely a neutral description but always implies – at least in everyday discourse – a value judgement. Chapter 2 deals with the evidence used in conspiracy theories. What arguments are put forward by believers, and how do they tell the story of the plots they believe they have discovered? In Chapter 3, I analyse the different functions of conspiracy theories for individuals and groups, and discuss the question of whether some people are more receptive to such theories than others. Chapter 4 traces the historical development of conspiracy theories from antiquity to the present, and ends with a discussion of the relationship between conspiracy theories and populism. Chapter 5 is devoted to the impact of the internet on the visibility and status, as well as the rhetoric and argumentation, of conspiracy theories. Using the coronavirus crisis as a point of departure, the book concludes by examining whether and in what circumstances conspiracy theories are dangerous, and tackles the current controversy over what to do about them.
As a German Americanist, I draw most of my examples from the USA, the UK and the German-speaking countries, but my analysis is not limited to these cultures. Due to my systematic approach, my observations also apply to conspiracy theories and cultures that I do not mention at all. However, my perspective on conspiracy theories is that of a scholar trained in literary and cultural studies. Much of what follows is the consensus view across academic disciplines; on some issues, though, opinions are divided, and a quantitative psychologist would come to very different conclusions. I also raise questions at various points which no discipline is currently able to answer due to the fact that little or no research has been done in these areas. In this respect, my book merely marks, if anything, the end of the beginning of the study of conspiracy theories. What goes for conspiracy theorists goes for conspiracy theory researchers too: there is always more to learn.
Notes
1 Churchill, W., ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism: a Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People’, Illustrated Sunday Herald, 8 February 1920, p. 5, at
