Beware of conspiracy theories*

*Ελληνικη μετάφραση

One of the most significant steps in turning stories from colourful anecdotes and vignettes into part of mainstream research methodology has been the search of the truth of a story not in its factual veracity but in its meaning.

Once we realize that many stories cannot be factually ‘proven’, we can still treat them as narratives that express powerful emotions, desires and passions – they express what people want to believe is true rather than what necessarily happened. This is important and almost self-evident.

Several things follow. One is that many stories draw on deep symbolism and assume mythological qualities. In such stories, archetypes like the hero, the trickster, the villain, the impostor and the victim emerge very clearly – their characters are not so much complex and complicated human beings as powerful symbols with relatively invariant qualities.

Another is that a story’s power lies in its ability to ‘resonate’ with its audience, to sound plausible and, therefore, truthful, i.e. to be verisimilar. This is what makes conspiracy theories important types of story. They seem plausible to the point where they resist correction by any appeal to ‘facts’.

Effective conspiracy theories are such powerful narratives that virtually any fact can be accommodated in them. A very simple narrative technique for discrediting any counter-fact is to argue that it is itself part of the conspiracy – that the conspirators have planted it in order to cover their tracks. This is why ‘it is easier to slay a dragon than to kill a myth’ (Gabriel, 1991).

Another common feature of conspiracy theories is to ask the question “Who benefited from an event?” and then argue that whoever benefited from it was its cause. “Who benefited from 9/11? The state of Israel. Ergo Mossad was behind it.”

The essence of a conspiracy theory then lies in its ability to:

• explain something bad, a failure, a disaster etc. in relatively simple and plausible terms
• attribute the failure to the actions of somebody (the ‘agent’) who stands to gain from the accident, disaster or failure
• invest the agent with malevolent intentions, cunning and diabolical ability to subvert every attempt at unmasking.
•  incorporate every detail, action and incident within this overall plot.

A conspiracy theory, therefore, is a story that helps make sense of events irrespective of whether it is true or not. This self-inoculating (non-falsifiable in Popper’s terms) quality sets it apart from other sensemaking devices, e.g. lists, scientific explanations, metaphors etc.

Does any of this matter? Of course it does, given how prominent conspiracy theories have become in contemporary discourses (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Here are some examples:

• Food scares
• Health scares (e.g. inoculation)
• Climate change (from both sides)
• Politics plots and scenarios
• Business conspiracies and cover ups

Far from being innocent pastimes for simple minds conspiracy theories can severely pollute public discourses and serve to scapegoat  particular groups. The fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion were instrumental in fuelling anti-Semitism just as the conspiracies theories behind the assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira set in motion the Rwandan genocide.

So, let’s apply the conspiracy theorists’ rationale to conspiracy theories themselves? Who benefits from conspiracy theories? Clearly the mass media benefit from such theories, since any whiff of conspiracy and cover-up does wonders for newspaper circulation, fuelling public paranoias and moral panics.

At a deeper level, however, it seems to me that conspiracy theories serve the interests of those who wish to undermine public institutions and honest discourse. Ultimately, it seems to me that conspiracy theories are a major instrument in the hands of those who wish to destabilize and subvert democracy. This is what makes them especially dangerous and demands that anyone with genuine concern for democracy should beware of them.

I am not, of course, arguing for a gullible citizenry who will believe whatever it is told. But when it comes to political discussions, ‘stories’ alone are not enough.

  

Gabriel,Y. 1991. On organizational stories and myths: Why it is easier to slay a dragonthan to kill a myth. International Sociology, 6(4):427-442.

Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. 2010. Merchants of doubt : how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Press.

*Ελληνικη μετάφραση