There are important differences between conspiracy theories and conspiracies. There really are conspiracies, in which “they” are out to get “you”, and there have been for a long time. The difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy reality is that in the case of the latter we know who “they” and “you” are.
Sometimes you see stories with titles along the lines of “Crazy conspiracy theories that turned out to be true”. If the claims are true, they are not theories. They are conspiracies.
Appropriately enough, the origin of the phrase “conspiracy theory” and the question of when it was first used are murky in the extreme, although most sources date it to sometime in the 19th century.
The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories – and yes, that’s a real book – defines a conspiracy as: something that involves more than one person (The word conspire is derived roughly from the Latin “con” meaning “with” and “spire” meaning “breathe”); has goals that are “either criminal, hostile or nefariously political”; and must be secret.
There is no shortage of genuine conspiracies that meet the Rough Guide’s criteria. We don’t need to resort to speculation about the CIA killing President John F Kennedy or the Duke of Edinburgh ordering the assassination of Princess Diana or JFK being Diana’s father.
Among the many real secret deals: Volkswagen falsifying emissions test results for their engines; the CIA plotting (for real this time) to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro; the tobacco industry misleading the public about the health dangers of their product; Ronald Reagan’s government illegally supplying arms to anti-government Iranian forces.
A conspiracy theory has to be false, spread in order to mislead people deliberately, and be believed. It should also include the elements of a real conspiracy: something criminal and covert being carried out by a group.
Some conspiracy theories are so outlandish that they are more entertaining than dangerous. David Icke’s belief that the Earth is run by alien lizards in human form has run its course. But there is surely still fun to be had with the belief some hold that at the CERN centre in Switzerland, home of the Large Hadron Collider, scientists are not really researching subatomic particles but are working on opening a gateway to hell itself.
The Holocaust was a clear example of a conspiracy – a secret plan to exterminate the Jewish race. Much effort went into concealing the planning that went into the Nazi plot that saw six million killed.
It’s appallingly appropriate that one of the drivers of the Holocaust was the anti-Semitic forged document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The relevant version was compiled in 1905 by Russian writer Sergei Nilus. Its contents, as wildly implausible and thoroughly discredited as they are, are at least vaguely familiar to many.
They purport to be the minutes of a secret meeting at which Jewish leaders formed a plan to achieve world domination. It was a classic conspiracy theory. It was also proved to be a fraud as early as 1921, about the time Adolf Hitler was introduced to it. The Protocols fed the dictator’s insane hatred of Jews and ultimately led to the Holocaust.
This would all be so much salutary history were it not that the Protocols are still believed to be genuine by some people today.
New Zealand now has a conspiracy theorist political party – Liz Gunn’s New Zealand Loyal. Her claims about “the deep state creatures who I’m afraid to say have for centuries, in fact, ruled our existence”, whether she is aware of it or not, echo the old anti-Semitic falsehoods.
We are still enduring the fallout of conspiracy theories around Covid. Here and overseas, these reached such a pitch that the European Commission and UNESCO felt it necessary to issue “a set of ten educational infographics helping citizens identify, debunk and counter conspiracy theories”.
For the record, the vaccine did not contain a microscopic chip that has been implanted and can be used to control you. That people who are capable of believing this walk among us is, regrettably a fact, not a conspiracy theory.
The people who believed the chip theory have not tried to keep their belief secret. Secrecy is the trickiest part of the conspiracy theory phenomenon. By definition, if we’ve heard about something, it’s not secret.
On the other hand, like the perfect crime, if it was secret, then we wouldn’t have heard about it.
Or is that just what they want you to think?
