Author: Dean Buckley

I could never explain how or why I became fascinated with conspiracy theories. It started at such a young age I can’t even work out a decent timeline of when I first encountered some of the books, films and TV shows I now regard as formative. I know I bought six books on a 2 for 3 deal when I was in primary school – four Dan Brown novels, a book about Atlantis I never actually read and The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories – and if I was interested before that purchase, I was obsessed soon after. It’s been a greater or lesser focus of mine at different times in my life, but it’s also been a gateway to other interests: cults, con artists, the occult, misinformation, pseudoscience, radicalisation, extremism. I am not an expert in anything, but I am a connoisseur of fringe, fanatical and false belief. I have spent thousands of hours across my entire life reading books, articles and documents, watching films, TV shows and YouTube videos, and especially in the last few years, listening to podcasts, because learning about strange beliefs and why people believe them is just one of the best ways I can imagine spending my time.

It is traditionally around this point I would stop to reassure you, in case it wasn’t clear, that I may be interested in conspiracy theories, but I am not myself a conspiracy theorist. And it is true that, whatever you imagine in your head when you think “conspiracy theorist”, I am not that. I am not a paranoid person who detects the hidden hand of some mysterious “Them” in current events. I do not believe in secret rulers and grand plans, or anything that breaks the laws of physics, denies the general historical record, defies sense or can’t be substantiated with credible evidence. I do not believe in the supernatural or paranormal and I despise all pseudoscience and medical quackery. I’m Catholic, and obviously believe in things beyond the material world, but they don’t affect how I view physical reality, because they are beyond the material world.

But I am, strictly speaking, a conspiracy theorist. I just don’t like to call myself one because it carries so much cultural baggage beyond its literal meaning. I want to disavow it because it’s radioactive, not because it’s unfair. Most people don’t use “conspiracy theorist” as a neutral descriptor for anyone who theorises conspiracy. If you call a cop or journalist investigating a criminal conspiracy a conspiracy theorist, you’re impugning their credibility and implying their allegations are fantasy. I do not believe in secret rulers and grand plans, but I do believe that conspiracy – people making secret plans to achieve goals through underhanded means – is a normal feature of human society. I also believe that conspiracy has played – and continues to play – a larger role in shaping the course of history than is commonly or officially acknowledged. The problem is that the concept of conspiracy itself has been tainted by the concept of conspiracy theories, to the extent the two terms are often used interchangeably (e.g. “that’s not true, that’s just a conspiracy!”). It turns the whole topic of conspiracy into a minefield and it doesn’t even help to reassure people you’re not crazy, because that’s exactly what crazy people say.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve lived my entire life within a historically unprecedented explosion of conspiratorial belief that has itself shaped the course of history more than we yet realise. Before the nineties, conspiracy theorists weren’t really part of the public zeitgeist outside pop culture, at least in the English-speaking world, but then 9/11 happened and now conspiracist belief is a fixture of global politics. Donald Trump alone is both the most famous, influential conspiracy theorist ever and possibly the subject of more conspiracy theories than anyone else in history. His most fanatical followers tried to overthrow the US government when he lost the 2020 election, and now he’s staffed his second, more openly fascist administration with multiple open conspiracy theorists.

It feels like reality is cracking apart from the inside, all of us stuck on one planet, but trapped in parallel worlds. Trying to find accurate information about a recent news event on the Internet is like wading through a hall of mirrors flooded with raw sewage. The danger of conspiratorial belief has never been more obvious and people’s wariness of it never more justified. I want to write about conspiracism in large part because I believe it is an immediate, growing threat to society and we must stop its spread or humanity is fucked. After all, there may be no conspiracy theory more widespread than denial of the climate crisis.

But we can’t accept the stigmatisation of belief in conspiracy as the cost of stopping its most destructive forms. We live in a profoundly corrupt world where a tiny elite hoard wealth and power for themselves and it only serves their interests to make claims of conspiracy taboo. It’s not just what they’ll do, either, it’s what they’ve already done. Every unacknowledged conspiracy is an unadmitted crime, every cover-up is a conspiracy itself. Countless people alive today are still fighting for the basic truth about atrocities committed before TVs had remote controls. Countless more are dead. They all deserve justice and they can’t get it when those who conspire against them can just slander them as conspiracy theorists. But it’s not just wrong, it wouldn’t even work. It hasn’t worked. It’s how we got here. Conspiracy theorists have only become more and more stigmatised in my lifetime and they’ve never been more numerous or influential. It’s the punchline at the end of history.

When you make conspiracy unspeakable, you make conspiracism inevitable.