Dispiracy Theory

As counter-concept to the „disquietude“ of revolt and revolution the late 18th century conservatives drew a picture of the „quiet“ of a seemingly harmonic order of subjects. This picture had previously not been there at all, Bieberstein describes it as „über-sharp elaborated image of world and man“ and as a „conscious antithesis to the human rights firstly made a political program in the Declaration of Independence.“ In a certain way this process looks like simple fronting, as moving together in the face of the same enemy. But this enemy didn‘t exist as such. Though the Illuminati and a minority of Freemasons did their share in accelerating social change there is no doubt that the revolution was a product of the social order to which alternatives had not been thinkable, it was not the result of something invading from the outside.

This tendency of outsourcing though is typical for late 18th century German propagandists of the conspiracy thesis. From reading Abbé Le Franc (Paris 1792) Bieberstein concludes „that in French counter-revolutionary circles the origin of the revolution was, other than among Germans, definitely located in France. This circumstance alone suggests that the anti-Freemason conspiracy thesis was developed in Germany.“

But Germany? Haven‘t the two most infamous and influential conspiracy theories about the Illuminati been written by the French Catholic Barruel and the Scottish Protestant Robeson? No, by accepting this version we already adopted the conspiracy fans‘ story as this is merely the self-display of later days‘ believers. The actual story of the formation of modern day conspiracy theory, as far as we can reconstruct it, asks completely different questions than ones about the possible continuous existence of the Illuminati order. It asks questions about the preconditions that made German counter-revolutionaries the constructors of modern conspiracy ideology.

Any historian will abhor the inept mechanical history, any political scientist the personalisation, any social scientist the ignorance against the majority of people, any journalist the poor research – but by doing so they play the game. Conspirationists do not want to show the experts that they are equal or better experts, they seek recognition via the audience. They might break the rules applying for the respective profession but that is only of interest for those who are subject to these rules themselves, not for the layperson readers, TV watchers, cinema goers or event attenders. They will most often not know about these rules and with high probability they will be influenced in their judgement by conspirationist shindig, the pretension of authority I refer to as ‚travesty‘. Sometimes if not often the audience will consider the conspirationist copy of science, history or journalism to be more scientific or adequate than the original.

Conspirationism manages to over-optimally emulate socially relevant structures on the level of their appearance. From their more or less marginal position, German protagonists of conspirationism usually present predigested information from US conspirology sources in a way that it forms a more consistent story and a more perfect system which then can be blamed for any personal failure. Having been defeated by these enormous historical powers makes any defeat somewhat heroic, but makes sure that no personal consequences are drawn from that defeat.

Has not everything already been said about conspiracy theories? Do not books lie in the displays of almost every store explaining how conspiracy theories work?

Well, do these books answer the arguably most important question as to why which conspiracy theories are believed under which circumstances? Or do they simply describe what those conspiracy theories look like while on the book cover it says „Freemasons“ and „Illuminati“ in flashing capital letters?

And what sort of books are offered next to these? Perhaps, books by Noam Chomsky dealing with „Media Control“? Or do you see over there the shelf with the magazines promising insights into the „Shadow Empire of the CIA“?

Could it be a little more difficult to stick conspiracy theories into a handy bag and and put them aside?

I want to rock the notion we‘ve come to love, that of a phenomenon of the lunatic fringe. Rather, I‘d like to focus on how conspiratorial thinking finds its way into the mainstream. I will both review the state of academic research and come up with several new theses.

From what the rare and semi-taboo academic studies show, three features of conspiratorial thinking seem to be most important.

First an idyllic and harmonic view of one’s own society or group is needed which only demands for conflicts to generally come from the outside, typically carried in by a small group.

Second, this dualistic picture of a conflict-free collective self and a decomposing alien other is accompanied by the confrontation of an essential with a deception, of an intuitively recognizable original truth with an abstract artificially calculated lie.

Third, the history of conspiratorial thinking teaches that these conceptions of freind and foe most frequently occur when a certain class of society sees itself threatened by loss of importance or social descent.

But all of these are statements about the origin and constitution of conspiracy theories not about their diffusion. It remains unclear why the bogeyman image of one social class or group can become that of larger segments of society. Also, the specific mass appeal of conspiratorial thinking long after the epoch of manifest class struggle cannot be understood.

I will try to show how conspiracy theories themselves are despite their role as emergency cement for unsettled world views no real problem but in fancy examples can even be stimulating and productive. In their most consequent form they pretty much match social reality with their description of a conspiracy of everybody against everybody else.

At the same time, I hope to make clear that conspirationism, my term for conspiracy ideologies forming closed worldviews, are one of the biggest political threats there are. Therefore I won‘t spend much effort on describing single conspiracy theories but rather concern myself with the transmission of conspirationism into society and with the conditions allowing it to become a determining political factor.

My aim is a better understanding of current political debates and an incitement not to bash the obvious anymore but to deal with the underestimated, dingy, unpleasant and dangerous conspirationism.