"Conspiracy Theory" Is Not A Useful Term
It only serves to make certain subjects off limits to discussion
If someone calls you a “conspiracy theorist,” odds are it is intended as an insult, or at least as an insinuation that you are a weird person with unnatural ideas. The term has been getting a lot of additional play in our supposed “post-truth” era. We hear more and more laments about the rise of “conspiratorial thinking” and about the dismaying increase in people’s susceptibility to “conspiracy theories.” Much ink has been spent wondering what causes people to believe in conspiracy theories, as well as what can be done to steer people away from them.
And yet, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to coming up with a workable definition of what the term “conspiracy theory” actually means. It is obviously meant to convey that certain ideas are so absurd as to be “beyond the pale,” but why some ideas should fall under this rubric and not others is never explained. What are the criteria (if any) being used to slap some concepts with the “conspiracy theory” designation?
In contemporary discourse, the phrase conveys a meaning that is more than the sum of its parts. The standard definition of a “Conspiracy” is a group of powerful or wealthy individuals getting together to pursue their own interests, usually at the expense of some other less powerful group. So, you can have a conspiracy to commit fraud, a conspiracy to commit murder, a conspiracy among a group of business executives to raise prices, and so on. “Theory,” in its everyday usage, means an idea or hypothesis. So, in a strictly literal sense, a “conspiracy theory” would be the idea that some sort of conspiracy exists, presumably backed up by at least some evidence. In the same vein, a “conspiracy theorist” would be a person who puts forward the reasons why he or she believes a conspiracy is taking or has taken place. There is no obvious reason why the term, again in this strictly literal sense, need take on negative connotations. After all, few would deny that the examples of conspiracies I mentioned above exist in the real world.
So why does the phrase carry such derisive implications in our culture? Why is it considered a put-down to call someone a conspiracy theorist?
It turns out that there is a very specific reason why the phrase is such a loaded one. As the political scientist Lance DeHaven Smith reveals in Conspiracy Theory in America, talk of “conspiracy theories” was relatively rare in the culture until the mid-1960s. In fact, DeHaven Smith asserts that “The term ‘conspiracy theory’ did not exist as a phrase in everyday American conversation before 1964.”
What was happening in 1964? Well, President John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated, and the Warren Commission Report investigating the murder was being conducted, and would later be released to the public. Then and now, millions of people, in this country and around the world, have harbored suspicions about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone – that he was the “lone gunman.” In fact, questions about the involvement of some combination of the CIA, the mafia, and anti-Castro Cuban exiles, began to gain traction immediately after the assassination, and especially after the subsequent assassination of Oswald by Jack Ruby. One did not have to be paranoid to suspect that a sitting U.S. President getting assassinated by a “lone gunman,” who is subsequently assassinated by another “lone gunman,” may have been more than simple coincidence.
So what does this have to do with the phrase “conspiracy theory?” Well, in the aftermath of the release of the Warren Commission, the C.I.A. became very concerned over some of the speculation, which was far from baseless, that the agency was somehow behind or at least involved with JFK’s murder. In order to muddy the waters and discredit its critics, the CIA initiated a propaganda program to smear the skeptical with toxic labels. It is this initiative that gave rise to the popularity of the conspiracy theory term as we know it today.
As DeHaven Smith writes,
Most Americans will be shocked to learn that the conspiracy-theory label was popularized as a pejorative term by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a propaganda program initiated in 1967. This program was directed at criticisms of the Warren Commission’s report. The propaganda campaign called on media corporations and journalists to criticize “conspiracy theorists” and raise questions about their motives and judgments. The CIA told its contacts that “parts of the conspiracy talks appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.” In the shadows of McCarthyism and the Cold War, this warning about communist influence was delivered simultaneously to hundreds of well-positioned members of the press in a global CIA propaganda network, infusing the conspiracy-theory label with powerfully negative associations.[i]
We have to be careful about correlation and causation here, but it really does appear that the term took off after the 1960s. And since the CIA had, and still has, a well-known (to historians if not the public) ability to influence popular culture via its clout with the press and Hollywood, the insinuation that the term “conspiracy theory” became a loaded one as the result of a C.I.A. program seems more than likely. For this reason alone, we should be careful about embracing the phrase. Why help the agency carry out its own propaganda?
But perhaps, some will argue, there is nothing wrong with the phrase, despite its suspect origins. Undeniably, there are plenty of truly ludicrous ideas about powerful people and organizations, so what’s the harm in having a term to denote them?
The problem is that once you accept that there is a category of ideas, no matter how “fringe,” that can safely be deemed so loony as to be not worth considering, you run the risk of engaging in lazy thinking, inadvertently consigning things that are true to the ideological rubbish heap without doing the hard work of examining them, solely on the grounds that they sound crazy to you. Unfortunately, if we want to be responsible citizens, we cannot do this. “It sounds insane, therefore, it can’t be true,” is not an argument; indeed, it’s a fallacy. Plenty of things that are very true sound completely off-the-wall, whether we’re talking about abstract scientific concepts like quantum physics or the machinations of the powerful in politics.
Viewed in this light, one starts to see how terms like “conspiracy theory” have the nefarious effect of artificially narrowing the range of acceptable opinion. According to Ginna Husting and Martin Orr, whose peer-reviewed research has examined the negative connotations surrounding the phrase,
If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid…I twist the machinery of interaction so that you, not I, are now called to account. In fact, I have done even more. By labelling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.[ii]
I’m sure this was the intention of the C.I.A. in insinuating that anyone who suggested that it might have had a hand in Kennedy’s death were “conspiracy theorists” who just might have been doing the bidding of international communism. Whether this was because the agency was attempting to cover up its involvement with the assassi
nation, or merely avoid any investigation or negative attention generally, is beyond the scope of this essay. Rather, the intention here is to argue that it is a harmful thing to think of certain ideas, especially those that encourage skepticism of power and wealth, as somehow being “off limits.”
To be sure, many ideas labelled “conspiracy theories” really are delusional. Examples include QAnon, Pizzagate, chemtrails, government coverups of UFOs, the idea that Congresspeople are lizard people, the idea that Iraq was either in league with Al Qaeda or responsible for 9/11 or both, the idea that Donald Trump was doing the bidding of the Kremlin, and so on. But some things that have been labelled “conspiracy theories” are at the very least plausible, even likely. Many intelligent people might otherwise take a closer look at them, had they not been discouraged by their designation as “conspiracy theories.” DeHaven Smith notes that “a common mistake made by conspiracy deniers is to lump together a hodgepodge of speculations about government intrigue, declare them all ‘conspiracy theories,’ and then, on the basis of the most improbable claims among them, argue that any and all unsubstantiated suspicions of elite political crimes are far-fetched fantasies destructive of public trust.” Perversely for an ostensibly democratic society, this ensures that “objective observation and analysis have been foreclosed by the very terms employed to frame and conceptualize the subject matter.”[iii]
[As an aside, we should note that not all conspiracies are carried out by governments. Some of the conspiracies are those of capital. The tobacco industry famously engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to obscure the fact that their product was literally killing people. And perhaps the most dangerous conspiracy of all time has been the one carried out by the fossil fuel industry to “manipulate the public mind” (to use public relations industry godfather Edward Bernays’ phrase) into believing that climate change is either not real or not worth doing anything about. This well-documented, massive operation may well have doomed the capacity of this planet to support organized human life as we know it, and as such is more than worthy of being called a conspiracy.[iv]]
“If,” DeHaven Smith concludes, “some conspiracy theories are true, then it is nonsensical to dismiss all unsubstantiated suspicions of elite intrigue as false by definition.”[v] Readers may at this point be wondering which ideas traditionally designated as “conspiracy theories” I consider to have validity. The list is admittedly small. I am not as open to them as some, including DeHaven Smith, whose book is valuable but who nonetheless embraces the idea that 9/11 was carried out by the U.S. government, which I see no evidence for, indeed, from what I can tell, much evidence contradicts it. I do, however, think that there was C.I.A. involvement in the Kennedy assassination, although that subject is so vast that I really can’t do it justice here. A more manageable example, one which was recently the subject of renewed interest, is the “October Surprise,” which has long been labelled a conspiracy theory, in my opinion unjustly.
In 1979, the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Shah finally crumbled under the weight of the Iranian Revolution. While the Revolution was originally a diverse movement consisting of secular and liberal elements as well as religious fundamentalist ones, the fanatics soon won the power struggle and began to build the Iran we have today. It was during this time that Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took American hostages, resulting in the infamous “Iran Hostage Crisis.” The situation captured the attention of the public, to say nothing of the Carter White House, for over a year.
The October Surprise “conspiracy theory” is the idea that in 1980 the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign covertly negotiated with representatives of Iran to keep the hostages imprisoned until after the election, in order to deny then-president Jimmy Carter a last-minute bump in the polls and possible election advantage. The accusation was prominently made by retired U.S. Navy Captain and National Security Council member Gary Sick, with follow-on investigative work done by famed journalist Robert Parry, both of whom provided considerable evidence to back up their claims.
I’ve never understood why the October Surprise has long been derided as a “conspiracy theory,” as opposed to simply wrong. The evidence for it was at the very least compelling, and it bore striking parallels to the famous incident where Henry Kissinger sabotaged Lyndon Johnson’s negotiations with the North Vietnamese, thereby prolonging the Vietnam War into the Nixon administration and causing that much more death and destruction. But for some reason, while the Nixon/Kissinger conspiracy is (correctly) considered an acknowledged historical fact,[vi] the idea that the Reagan campaign did something similar is seen as deserving of the condescending “conspiracy theory” label. This despite the fact that Reagan illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund Contra death squads in Nicaragua is also an accepted matter of historical fact – the infamous “Iran-Contra Scandal.”
All that aside, earlier this year, the New York Times unexpectedly published controversial revelations that lent the “conspiracy theory” some more credibility. In a March 18, 2023 article titled “A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election,” Times journalist Peter Baker reported on a late-in-life confession made by Texas politician Ben Barnes, who claimed to have travelled to various Middle Eastern capitals along with former Texas governor John Connally, with the intention of conveying a message to the Iranians through intermediaries that if they held the hostages until after the election, a Reagan administration would give them a better deal. Barnes’ statements led to a great amount of discussion about the October Surprise “conspiracy theory,” and whether it really deserved that pejorative in the first place (after the story debuted, Wikipedia quietly retitled its article on the subject “1980 October Surprise theory,” removing the word “Conspiracy”).
Numerous observers pointed out that the conspiracy to delay the release of the hostages had never really been kept all that secret, and that “many, many people have said it occurred. But most of the people doing so have been foreigners. Barnes is merely the most important American to finally come out and support the story.”[vii] And even Barnes’ revelations had previously been covered in a 2015 biography of Reagan, though they did not attract attention at the time.
It seems that because the newspaper of record declared something to be true, the mainstream adjusted their perceptions accordingly. This is not a good way to determine truth or falsehood, but so it goes. Perhaps other opinion makers will follow Wikipedia’s lead and cease referring to the October Surprise as a “conspiracy theory.” That would be a good thing. What they’re unlikely to do is reflect on what this says about the utility of the conspiracy theory label generally. The fact that the same term lumps a plausible suggestion of elite criminality - with recent precedents (Kissinger’s Vietnam treachery) and considerable evidence - into the same category as QAnon and chemtrails suggests that the term is flawed and should be retired. As DeHaven Smith argued, “conspiracy deniers have been unable to formulate a definition of [“conspiracy theory”] that would allow observers to accurately differentiate irrational conspiratorial suspicions from reasonable beliefs. This failure has dangerous implications, for the term ‘conspiracy theory’ has become a mechanism of social control, a label with normative implications backed by force. It equates those who voice suspicions of crimes in high places with the enemies of reason, civility, and democracy.”[viii]
It cannot be emphasized enough that there are plenty of widespread ideas considered to be “conspiracy theories” which are indeed devoid of evidence and that should not be embraced. But no idea is beneath mere consideration. It is the responsibility of intelligent people to treat all claims with what Carl Sagan called “the marriage of skepticism and wonder.” This does not mean we should become gullible children who are open to every far-fetched idea that aligns with our pre-conceived notions. But neither does it mean that we should axiomatically reject every idea that sounds (to us) too crazy to be believed. It may strike some as silly to suggest that corporations spend a great deal of time and money on tightly-organized campaigns to shape the thoughts and opinions of entire populations, yet as we’ve seen above with the tobacco and climate examples, such a thing is not uncommon in supposedly “democratic” societies. And many people view the suggestion that the intelligence community engages in sinister behavior against American citizens as worthy of instant dismissal. In doing so they demonstrate their ignorance of history, not their immunity to disinformation. The only way forward is for a literate, engaged public to examine claims individually and on their merits, to the maximum extent that this is possible. A good first step toward doing this would be abandoning the term “conspiracy theory,” which serves to hinder, not help, the pursuit of truth. It “equates intellectual nonconformity with irrationality and seeks to enforce conformity in the name of reason, civility, and democracy.”[ix] We can do better.
[i] Lance DeHaven Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, p. 21, emphasis in original.
[ii] Quoted in ibid, p. 11.
[iii] Ibid, p. 3.
[iv] The literature on both these subjects is vast. The best introduction is Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
[v] DeHaven Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, p. 6.
[vi] See Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, especially chapter one.
[vii] Jon Schwarz, “A Short History of Everyone Who Confirmed Reagan’s October Surprise Before the New York Times,” The Intercept, 24 March 2023.
[viii] DeHaven Smith, pp. 36-37
[ix] Ibid, p. 40.