Thread by @yungneocon

What’s funny is that one of the main actual disinformation techniques of the CIA & FBI (as well as intelligence & secret police for at least 2 centuries ) is the purposeful spread of conspiracy theories

It was part of COINTELPRO and CHAOS and it was openly used by CIA and Army intelligence in the US occupations and invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere

Conspiracy theories:
1. Focus on individuals & cabals rather than structures
2. Give the idea that a system can be reformed and is fundamentally benign or good otherwise
3. Scapegoat sections of the elite (to the benefit of other sections of the elite)

4. Feed into reactionary movements
5. Sow division & suspicion among radical movements
6. Emphasize individual action & ‘raising Awareness’ (‘exposing’ rather than organizing)
7. Coincide with a liberal & idealist notion of human history
8. And foster defeatism & resignation

In other words, among some segments they foster resignation that the enemies are too powerful & corrupt and therefore can’t be changed. While among those who think it can be changed, it redirects them to impotent tactics, raising awareness, reformism, and scapegoating.

This is different than a ‘theory of conspiracies’—the structural analysis of political and economic structures conducive to secret & private collusion by elites or counter elites

DeHaven Smith proposes we rename conspiracy theory as theories of elite political crime, in order to get rid of the negative associations. I like this formulation although it’s a bit too legalistic for me.

My own preference is for a theory of social movements & policy that occur under conditions of relative:
1. Secrecy
2. Privacy
3. Formal illegitimacy
4. Collusion
5. Eliteness

The ‘ideal’ type conspiracy matches all 5 characteristics, but many things that only feature 2-4 of these traits, we might want to call conspiracies. So the typological definition is flexible at the same time that it is precise.

‘A conspiracy theory’ therefore is characterized by post hoc reasoning, individualistic analysis, lack of structural thinking, short on evidence, and serves to suture together a worldview or conversely sow division (and often both)

A theory of conspiracies, by contrast, is a structural theory of the institutional and social conditions under which actors engage in private & secret elite collusion or social counter movements based in secrecy, privacy, and de jure illegitimacy

Now, it goes without saying, sometimes things are both. Sometimes smoke (or rather the absence of smoke in conspiracy theories case) really does point to fire.

For example, Edward Said argues that people in the Middle East are prone to believing in erroneous and absurd conspiracy theories because they’re often victims of real conspiracy theories, but that ironically the former often leads to missing the latter at the time.

Black Americans & Indigenous peoples are regularly subject to extra judicial policing & elite collusion, government & private, on many levels and at many registers. This is basically indisputable.

conversely, for those who operate in the grayer areas of the economy—the lumpen, informal workers, undocumented immigrants, people with criminal records, etc—‘conspiracy’ is a *necessary* feature because collusive private & secret social organizing is necessary to evade the state

These two dynamics coincide in what is basically a state & capital orchestrated low intensity civil war within US urban metropoles (this is actually Felix’s phrasing of all peoples lol, he sometimes accidentally lets his intelligence show through when he’s passionate)

If you’ve ever ended up on a drug dealers couch in a flop house for whatever reason, and spent any time listening, you’ll probably have heard a conspiracy theory within a couple minutes of the encounter. This makes a lot of sense.

For those people for whom conspiracy in a regular feature of their lived existence, and their lived existence is also defined by the impersonal brutalities of the state & capitalism, ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘theory of conspiracies’ converge.

This is very different from the other main constituent of conspiracy theories—the downwardly mobile petty bourgeois and upwardly mobile professionals, among segments of the dominant group (for ex white people in US & Germany, for 2 confirmed cases)

For these people, conspiracy does NOT define their lives, snd they’re largely not the victims of the impersonal forces of state & capitalism (tho they are subject to them), but they are not the winners of these processes either.

Unfortunately the social base, content, themes, communication technologies, personalities & sources of conspiracy theories mean they migrate across these radically different social bases quite easily (they’re a bit like nationalism in this regard).