I can think of two common and closely related patterns of delusional conspiracy theories that are nevertheless plausible to great numbers of people. (These are not the only ones, of course.)
The first pattern occurs when large groups of people express beliefs and perform acts that are systematically biased in a certain direction and effectively further some clearly recognizable interests and goals, and yet there is no consciously organized coordination among them. Such situations often occur because humans are instinctively attracted towards opinions and acts that signal high status and affiliation with prestigious groups. Yet for many people it’s hard to believe that such spontaneous decentralized coordination is possible, so they seek explanation in conspiracy theories.
So, for example, the mainstream media often exhibit strong and practically uniform bias in their coverage of politicians, events, and issues. Thus, for many people it’s tempting to assume that they are indeed under some centralized editorial command. Depending on their ideological inclinations, they may imagine these commands coming from boardrooms of nefarious media tycoons, or perhaps (for even loonier types) from scheming cabals of Jews. Yet in reality, even the strongest and most uniform biases simply reflect those beliefs that are considered high-status among the sort of people that tend to work in the media—and the prevalence of this sort of people is itself not a matter of any conspiracy or centralized control, but a spontaneously originating and self-perpetuating artifact of normal human social behavior.
The second, closely related pattern occurs when people detect correctly that they are getting cheated, lied to, or screwed over by the elites in charge, but are unable to analyze accurately what’s going on. (These actions may actually be conspiratorial to some degree, but more often it’s a matter of spontaneous coordination as in the above example.) In many instances, an accurate analysis of the situation would be too complicated for the average person, while intellectuals risk their own status if they realize the truth and speak it openly (attacking the elite opinion is by definition a status-lowering move). Thus, people end up creating conspiracy theories that have some vague kernel of truth in them, but are a gross and simplistic caricature of what’s really going on. In turn, intellectuals are happy to use these laughable caricatures as convenient strawmen for attacking their more sophisticated critics.
For example, the conspiracy theories that flourished in the Second Red Scare (a.k.a. “McCarthyist”) period in the U.S. were a consequence of a very real record of misdeeds, blunders, covert dealings, ideological delusions, and sometimes even real espionage and treason among the American political and intellectual elites. Yet the popular awareness of these problems found its expression in naive and grotesque grand conspiracy theories à laGeneral Ripper, which were a ridiculous caricature of the complicated and bizarre reality—in which actual conspiracies were far from absent, but a relatively minor factor in the big picture, which was as usual determined by the regular human patterns of social behavior and status-seeking, and the systematic biases and spontaneously coordinated actions following from them.
I can think of two common and closely related patterns of delusional conspiracy theories that are nevertheless plausible to great numbers of people. (These are not the only ones, of course.)
The first pattern occurs when large groups of people express beliefs and perform acts that are systematically biased in a certain direction and effectively further some clearly recognizable interests and goals, and yet there is no consciously organized coordination among them. Such situations often occur because humans are instinctively attracted towards opinions and acts that signal high status and affiliation with prestigious groups. Yet for many people it’s hard to believe that such spontaneous decentralized coordination is possible, so they seek explanation in conspiracy theories.
So, for example, the mainstream media often exhibit strong and practically uniform bias in their coverage of politicians, events, and issues. Thus, for many people it’s tempting to assume that they are indeed under some centralized editorial command. Depending on their ideological inclinations, they may imagine these commands coming from boardrooms of nefarious media tycoons, or perhaps (for even loonier types) from scheming cabals of Jews. Yet in reality, even the strongest and most uniform biases simply reflect those beliefs that are considered high-status among the sort of people that tend to work in the media—and the prevalence of this sort of people is itself not a matter of any conspiracy or centralized control, but a spontaneously originating and self-perpetuating artifact of normal human social behavior.
The second, closely related pattern occurs when people detect correctly that they are getting cheated, lied to, or screwed over by the elites in charge, but are unable to analyze accurately what’s going on. (These actions may actually be conspiratorial to some degree, but more often it’s a matter of spontaneous coordination as in the above example.) In many instances, an accurate analysis of the situation would be too complicated for the average person, while intellectuals risk their own status if they realize the truth and speak it openly (attacking the elite opinion is by definition a status-lowering move). Thus, people end up creating conspiracy theories that have some vague kernel of truth in them, but are a gross and simplistic caricature of what’s really going on. In turn, intellectuals are happy to use these laughable caricatures as convenient strawmen for attacking their more sophisticated critics.
For example, the conspiracy theories that flourished in the Second Red Scare (a.k.a. “McCarthyist”) period in the U.S. were a consequence of a very real record of misdeeds, blunders, covert dealings, ideological delusions, and sometimes even real espionage and treason among the American political and intellectual elites. Yet the popular awareness of these problems found its expression in naive and grotesque grand conspiracy theories à la General Ripper, which were a ridiculous caricature of the complicated and bizarre reality—in which actual conspiracies were far from absent, but a relatively minor factor in the big picture, which was as usual determined by the regular human patterns of social behavior and status-seeking, and the systematic biases and spontaneously coordinated actions following from them.