In Defense of Conspiracy Theories

What are conspiracy theories, why do people like them, elite paranoia, why people are afraid of them, and how to think about them

This is a topic I’ve written about before (and also spent several years teaching to undergrads). The first part of this post is a direct rehashing of an article I wrote for a now defunct magazine called Asylum in 2022. The second half is more about why conspiracy theories—especially those about Epstein and Jews broadly—are increasingly prominent, and throws some cold water on the overheated reactions to this trend.

1. What are conspiracy theories?

To begin with, I do not like the term conspiracy theories. Not because it was invented by the CIA—it wasn’t—but because the term, much like its cousin-term “misinformation,” once you attempt to define it, reveals itself to be meaningless. Whatever definition one can come up with will either be much too vague and end up including ideas that are not commonly understood to be conspiracy theories, or much too narrow and exclude those that are.

Instead these terms operate as rhetorical cudgels to delegitimize whatever ideas and speakers the person leveling the accusation does not like. That is all. Richard Weaver called this kind of language “devil terms.” If you drill down on what is meant by “conspiracy theory,” its distinct elements as a category of belief, how conspiracy theories are functionally different from other kinds of narratives that attempt to explain the causes of various events and circumstances, you will find nothing there. The edges bleed out; the center is empty.

And yet, surely, the term must mean… something. In a somewhat new semantic twist, people espousing “conspiracy theories” have begun to self-consciously refer to themselves as “conspiracy theorists.” For example, on a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast (which has received a A LOT of attention since it aired last week, and which is the reason I decided to write this post), he and his guest, Ian Carroll, open the podcast by calling themselves conspiracy theorists and riffing on why they find conspiracy theories so compelling.