The Nature of Conspiracy Theories

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Michael Butter. The Nature of Conspiracy Theories

Contents

Guide

Pages

The Nature of Conspiracy Theories

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

Introduction, or: What’s the plan?

Notes

1 ‘Everything is planned’, or: What is a conspiracy theory?

Characteristics

Typologies

Conspiracy theories and real conspiracies

The term as a means of delegitimization

Conspiracy theories as theories

Notes

2 ‘Nothing is as it seems’, or: How do conspiracy theorists argue?

Structure and strategies of argumentation

Evidence

Countering the official version

Case study: Daniele Ganser

Metaphors and more

Notes

3 ‘Everything is connected’, or: Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?

Functions

Are conspiracy theories for losers?

Propaganda and commerce

Case study: Alex Jones

Notes

4 The story so far, or: How have conspiracy theories evolved historically?

Emergence and development up to the twentieth century

Delegitimization and stigmatization after 1945

Case study: the myth of the global Jewish conspiracy

Conspiracy theories and populism

Notes

5 Current trends, or: How is the internet changing conspiracy theories?

The ‘truth’ is just a Google search away

Relegitimization in the echo chamber

From conspiracy theories to conspiracy rumours

Case study: Donald Trump

Notes

Conclusion: When are conspiracy theories dangerous and what can we do about them?

Notes

Index

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Michael Butter

Translated by Sharon Howe

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Perhaps the strongest argument against conspiracy theories, however, is that they are rooted in a view of human agency and history that has been radically challenged by the modern social sciences. Conspiracy theories are based on the assumption that human beings can direct the course of history according to their own intentions – in other words, that history is plannable. They credit conspirators with the ability to control the destiny of a country or even the world for years or decades at a time. Indeed, they often understand history as a series of plots by one or various groups. Consequently, they have a fundamentally different view of the world from that of psychology, sociology or political science. According to psychology, the ego is not master in its own house, as Sigmund Freud famously put it; in many cases, we don’t know exactly what we do or don’t want, and find it accordingly difficult to act on our intentions. But even if we did always know our own desires, we still couldn’t achieve them, since social systems – as sociology and political science have shown – have a life of their own and generate effects that no one intended.

Few people have articulated this insight as clearly as Karl Popper. In the second volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies, he begins the chapter ‘Marx’s Method’ with a general discussion of why human beings ‘are, if anything, the product of life in society rather than its creators’. He does not of course deny that ‘the structure of our social environment is man-made in a certain sense’, but stresses that this is only part of the story: ‘even those [institutions and traditions] which arise as the result of conscious and intentional human actions are, as a rule, the indirect, the unintended and often the unwanted by-products of such actions’. The task of the social sciences, he therefore concludes, is to investigate these unintended consequences and, ideally, predict them.14

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