Conspiracy Theory: a Term loses Meaning

With apologies to Horkheimer, those who allege conspiracism have a purpose but no direct meaning

It’s the season of year-end lists, and Dr. Carmen Celestini of the University of Waterloo and Professor Amarnath Amarasingam of Queen’s University contribute a list of popular conspiracy theories, or more precisely of ideas that they dismiss as conspiracy theories, here. Their list demonstrates that the term “conspiracy theory” has lost contact with any direct meaning or denotation, while retaining its highly negative connotations.

If you don’t want insects on your canapes, you’re a conspiracy theorist!

A recent Canadian Press story listed conspiracy theories said to be believed by conservatives, which I itemized here. Of the 13 ostensible theories named by the CP, only five even posited a conspiracy; a number were true, and one was dislike of the mainstream media. As with the CP, there is a definite ideological colour to the professors’ list: conspiracy theories are ideas they disagree with propounded by people they dislike, in other words by conservatives and populists.

I went into the meaning of the term “conspiracy theory” in considerable analytical (and arguably pedantic) detail here. The term necessarily postulates a conspiracy, which is to say a secret plot or plan, as an explanation or theory of something. While the CP listed 13 purported conspiracy theories, the professors limit themselves to five, aside from passing references. In this case, not one actually includes a conspiracy; all are inconvenient to power.

In brief, the professors’ five “conspiracy theories” are:

• The Great Replacement Theory: obviously neither secret nor a theory, but rather, as Vivek Ramaswamy points out, (and on which they quote him) a policy;

• “The ‘Groomer’ Panic”: their term for opposition to gender ideology, such opposition being called “anti-LGBTQ”. Gender ideology is not a secret, it being taught in schools as a matter of policy, and opposition to it does not imply belief in a conspiracy.

• Fifteen Minute Cities: as the authors admit, this is a real policy idea, and it has already been used to restrict citizens’ movement in Oxford, not normally considered a home to know-nothings. Once again, there is nothing secret, and the policy direction is obvious. Googling “15 minutes cities” will produce a screenful of the MSM protesting too much.

• “Bug Eating Conspiracy Theory”: As the authors concede, using insects as a protein source is a real policy, so there is nothing secret here. And with campaigns against beef (cows emit methane), it is linked inevitably to global warming, another favoured elite cause.

• Agenda 2030: the UN Agenda 2030 is again not a secret. The UN describes it at great length and with much jargon here. With all its diversity-and-inclusion talk, it is obviously aiming in a statist direction.

The good professors have presented us with five “conspiracy theories”, none of which posit a conspiracy. Worse, none are even theories, in the sense that none seek to explain some other phenomenon. As Ramaswamy saw of the great replacement, these are policies, not theories, and elite-supported policies at that.

If a conspiracy theory requires two things — a conspiracy and a theory — these authors present five examples that contain zero of what would be a required ten desiderata.

One has a sense that the professors know this, their full title referring to “conspiracies and bad ideas that caught on or gained momentum in 2023.” A certain amount of base-covering is going on in that title: as none of their five “conspiracies” contain either a conspiracy or a theory, they must all be “bad ideas,” a term of laudable directness. “Conspiracy theory” is there for polemical effect.

The term “conspiracy theory” has lost its direct meaning — its specific denotation of explanation by secret plot — but retains it strong connotation of crankiness, weirdness, even craziness. It partakes in and works from a discourse of sanity: you are a tinfoil hat-wearing extremist if you take the wrong position on demographic change, gender ideology, dietary regulation, fifteen minute cities, or the UN 2030 agenda.

And as well as crazy, you are probably stupid too. Sophisticated, intelligent and well-informed people will take the required line in support of the five favoured causes. Foucault had half a point when he argued that the discourse of sanity, like the discourse of knowledge, is a discourse of power. Here, it is the first gambit of power, coming not to debate but to exclude.

The discourse of conspiracism functions as a kind of social signal (as I argued here), communicating that good people who wish to be taken seriously and invited to the right parties, or indeed to job interviews, will not talk about certain things, and if they do will speak in the desired way, deploring the designated deplorables.

The emptying of a term of its positive meaning while retaining its strongly pejorative connotations is a move available to those who exercise a kind of verbal or discursive power. It is a move open to those who have the power to certify some opinions as reputable, reasonable, and intelligent, and other opinions as weird or insane conspiracy theories, while discouraging too close an analysis of what exactly a conspiracy theory might be.

In this case, it is a move (to repeat the chess metaphor) open to members of a state-funded and institutionally certified intellectual elite, which is to say to members of a bureaucratic intelligentsia. It is not a coincidence that all of the five “conspiracy theories” under attack here are matters of state policy, pushed organically by state bureaucracies. The professors conclude that the ideas they dislike “eat away at the heart of democratic discourse,” which puts many large topics outside the range of democratic discourse, a move not democratic at all. Like “conspiracy theory”, the adjective “democratic” has lost contact with any concrete meaning.

The discourse of conspiracism is a way of speaking and writing that operates in the interests of bureaucratic power. It is well captured by the author biographies here, long on academic jobs and mainstream media publications, and containing many mentions of institutes, centres and projects on bad but urgent things, including “disinformation”, “extremism”, “radicalization,” and of course “conspiracy theories.” And for two professors of religion, it’s pretty clear that they don’t much like Christianity (“Christian Nationalism") either.

https://religiondispatches.org/author/celestini_amarasingam/

The social position of these grandly titled institutes is relevant: in common with their host universities all are taxpayer-funded, without being formally or directly a part of the state, and without being responsible to democratically elected politicians. The discourse of conspiracism has become the weapon of an autonomous bureaucracy. The semantic loss — the loss of specific meaning — is not noticed because the discourse serves a desired polemical purpose, enhancing the power of those who use it.

The discourse around the term “conspiracy theory” comes from above, and it comes to tell you what you may (not) think.