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Cassamagain!
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"Cassamagain"? Why do we keep letting Josh come up with titles? True, this episode again looks at the work of Quassim Cassam; this time it's "Conspiracy Theories" - not the book, but its remake/sequel article from 2023. Is it the Evil Dead 2 of conspiracy theory theory, or is it the The Craft: Legacy? It's not Desperado, that's for damn sure.
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Transcript
Introduction & Host Locations
00:00:04
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Addison and Em Denteth.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast's guide to the conspiracy. In Auckland, New Zealand, I am Josh Addison and in Zhuhai, China, man is the warmest place to hide. It's associate professor Em Arix Denteth.
00:00:31
Speaker
It's true. I've been hiding in men for a long time, but it's time to emerge. Ton-Ton style. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll get you, Luke. I'll get you, Luke.
Em's Academic Journey
00:00:46
Speaker
yes Now, here's the point where I normally say, so what have you been up to over the last two weeks? Although we're going to be talking about what you've been up to in the bonus episode. So is there any non-spoilery stuff you can say about your adventures in academia over the last fortnight?
00:01:03
Speaker
No, I mean I've been doing some paper reviews and I've also been revising the paper that I presented at the workshop in Kent back in June. So this is revisions based upon the feedback I got at Kent and also the very useful feedback that Curtis Hagan sent me when I sent him a copy of the paper before I went to Kent.
00:01:26
Speaker
and Curtis's feedback has been very helpful except for the fact that between sending him the paper and presenting at Kent I also rewrote a large section of the paper and so now I'm looking at Curtis's notes going think I've changed that, but now I need to go back and reread that section to see whether Curtis' worry still applies to the rewritten version or not. So it's ending up being an interesting case of time travel, going back all the way to the distant past of June 2024. And actually in this case, so the beginning of June 2024 when I was working on that original paper. It was a different time. It was. like I was younger then.
00:02:11
Speaker
yeah Okay, well
Transition to Conspiracy Theories
00:02:14
Speaker
that'll do. like Like I say, ah we'll talk more in the bonus episode, but that is not the episode we're doing right now. This episode, it's as well as as I discovered at the end of last episode, M hornswoggled me. It was a literal hornswoggle, I in that I thought we were done talking about Cassian-Cassane on conspiracy theories, but Just when I thought I was out, you pulled me back in. Yes, and I pulled you back in because we reviewed Qasam's book, Conspiracy Theories. We're going to be reviewing Qasam's article, Conspiracy Theories. And technically, conspiracy theories is a summation of conspiracy theories. so But as we're going to see, it's not quite the same argument, even though ostensibly
00:03:06
Speaker
It is.
Literature & Film Analogy
00:03:07
Speaker
It's a very, very confusing paper. Yes, it's one of those it's it's one of those ones that's sort of part s sequel and part remake. It's the it's the Evil Dead 2 of philosophy papers or the, yeah what was the other one they did? Oh, the craft.
00:03:27
Speaker
that the recent remake of The Craft, which then turned out to be a stealth sequel at the end, I think. Yes, I haven't seen the sequel slash requel of The Craft, but maybe one day I will. Maybe one day. I mean, I probably won't, but maybe one day I will.
00:03:45
Speaker
Okay, well, we've established we've established what movie this paper is the equivalent of, which is I guess is the important work done. It's definitely an e-craft. It might be a recent e-craft. I worry, and this is probably skipping to the end slightly, Evil Dead 2 is a good film. Yes, you know, I think that's a good paper.
00:04:07
Speaker
I did, that that
Defining Conspiracy Theories
00:04:08
Speaker
did occur to me. But well, let's let let's let's chuck in a chime, start talking about it for real, and then we can see how it how it stacks up. Indeed. Welcome to Conspiracy Theory.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now I do have to say straight away distinct lack of chainsaws in this paper, so already Evil Dead 2 is pulling out far in front, but um maybe we shouldn't judge too hastily. yeah Is it Evil Dead 2 also the film that has the tree rape?
00:04:46
Speaker
Ah, no, that's the first one. Is that? Ah. Yeah. Then again, because of the nature of Evil Dead 2 being kind of a quasi remake and also sequel to Evil Dead 1, they do get a bit confused in the old memory hall. They do, yes. No, it's quite understandable. um And yeah, I think we're in for a fair bit of confusion in this one as well. Now, the but the paper we're talking about is Conspiracy Theories, same title as the book.
00:05:13
Speaker
yeah jo Josh, I i just want to point out, in the notes, which of course the the listeners cannot see, you've got conspiracy theories by, and then what it appears to be in scare quotes, Kasim Kasam. I appear to have written that in a bit of a hurry and put the quote marks in the wrong place. you so very different This is written by Qassim Qassam. This is not allegedly Qassim Qassam or um a pseudonym or moniker. It is a Qassim Qassam paper, conspiracy theories, as published in society back in February of 2023. Yes, yes, little, little typological inexactitude on my part. So maybe, maybe I should stick to um ah someone else's words rather than my own flawed writing and go through the abstract.
00:06:01
Speaker
Now this is usually a point where Josh maintains that he never gets to read the abstract and is going to read it this time. And I then usually counter that Josh almost always reads the abstract. But rather than engage in this pointless back and forth about who wants to read an abstract, this is who doesn't. I will be the gracious loser and concede to Josh the abstract reading part of this particular aspect of the podcast. Josh, please, intone.
00:06:29
Speaker
That's very good of you. To be honest, I cannot remember. but I can't remember the last time any of either of us read out an abstract. So I'm just making it up. And it's my turn. And I will exercise my turn by saying current thinking about conspiracy theories is dominated by epistemological and psychological approaches. The former see the study of conspiracy theories as a branch of epistemology and insist that each theory should be judged on its evidential merits.
00:06:54
Speaker
On this account, a counter-con conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event which cites a conspiracy as a salient cause. that sounds a little familiar Psychological approaches explain belief in conspiracy theories by reference to individual personality traits and generic cognitive biases. Despite their popularity, both epistemological and psychological approaches are flawed.
00:07:13
Speaker
After identifying their flaws, a case is made for a different perspective which focuses as on the political function of
Political Impact of Conspiracy Theories
00:07:19
Speaker
conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory is not just an explanation of an event which cites ah a conspiracy as a salient cause. Conspiracy theories have a range of additional features which distinguish them from ordinary theories about conspiracies and to make them unlikely to be true.
00:07:33
Speaker
The political approach sees many conspiracy theories as forms of political propaganda and is especially mindful of the role of conspiracy theories in promoting extremist ideologies. But the one thing I want to note, in conspiracy theories, the book, which we're going to have to keep on making, in the same order, right. Previously, when we covered Kasam, we had to distinguish between conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories with capital C, capital T.
00:07:58
Speaker
Now we need to distinguish between conspiracy theories of the book and conspiracy theories of the article. But the thing we don't need to distinguish, except we're going to have to do it anyway, is that in the abstract and as we find in the rest of the paper,
00:08:15
Speaker
you'll never find an instance of theory being capitalized with a T. So sometimes conspiracy will be when it it appears at the beginning of the sentence. But at no point do we get capital C, capital T, conspiracy theories. This is a paper about conspiracy theories no matter what kind of capitalization you want to use.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yes. So we'll as we go through this, we'll see ah what that leads to. But we can start at the start with the first section of this paper proper, which is called What is a Conspiracy Theory? ah she goes So this one is capitalized, but that's due to the laws of headings as opposed to the laws of sentences.
00:08:59
Speaker
ah So he starts by giving the example of the gunpowder plot as an example of of of something that is a conspiracy. um He defines conspiracy as a small group of people working together in secret to do something illegal or harmful, and a conspiracy theory as just an explanation of an event which cites a conspiracy as a salient cause, referring to 1M Dentith 2019. Now we noticed he didn't refer to you at all in his book,
00:09:29
Speaker
ah But here you're quoted a few times. so I am. So he's just copying you and in the interim, or have you started making a name for yourself? Well, I'd like to think I had already made a name for myself back when Kasam wrote his book, but as we noted at the time, Kasam's references to the existing philosophical literature were very limited there. So basically, Keely Cody and Picton, so no Basham, no Curtis Hagen. It is a kind of, is a lacking trove of
Scale and Scope of Conspiracies
00:10:00
Speaker
philosophers here. There are more philosophers being referenced here. It might also be because I wrote a rather damning review of Kasam's book.
00:10:10
Speaker
and Kasam was aware of that review because the journal I reviewed it for, the Journal of Political Philosophy, gave the review to Kasam before it was published so that he could write a reply to it. So he was aware of my criticism of the work and maybe that led him to be interested in what else I have to say here. But the thing I do want to point out He's taking my definition of conspiracy theory here, but the definition of conspiracy is not mine, because I do not think a conspiracy is necessarily a small group. I think you can have large-scale conspiracies, like the conspiracy behind the Moscow show, trials. And I also think you can have large-scale conspiracies where maybe only a few people know
00:10:57
Speaker
the inner workings of the conspiracy, like the Volkswagen emission scandal, where even though a lot of people were involved, it is also plausible to think that only a few people knew the extent of the conspiracy. So I'm quite happy to say, look, conspiracies can be big or small. What's important is the way the conspiracy is structured, not the number of people involved in the conspiracy.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yes, and you also don't think they're necessarily something illegal or harmful as well. No, no, that's the other thing. So this is not my definition of conspiracy. So therefore linking the definition of conspiracy to my definition of conspiracy theory is already sending out a few red flags.
00:11:42
Speaker
yeah
Neutral vs. Critical Views
00:11:43
Speaker
Now, he calls this definition of conspiracy theory the neutral definition. So again, a conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy. That's what he calls the neutral definition. And he says the sense in which the neutral definition is neutral is that it leaves open the question whether conspiracy theories are justified or unjustified, true or false.
00:12:02
Speaker
He then goes on to quote Charles Pigton with a to to to give a neutral definition of a conspiracy theorist, which in in the neutral definition is someone who subscribes to a conspiracy theory. And he notes that that people who go for this neutral definition know of conspiracy theory and theorists are quite happy to accept that everyone's a conspiracy theorist one way or another.
00:12:27
Speaker
Whereas people who aren't, who who don't necessarily subscribe to this definition are not at all happy with the idea that we're all conspiracists, they would say no. Which is fair. Yeah, which is fair. I mean, if you don't if you don't if you don't like the label conspiracy theory, and you don't like it because you're building into the definition of conspiracy theory, that is in some sense a prima facie bad theory, whether that be epistemic, psychological, sociological, etc.
00:12:54
Speaker
then you're not going to want to be called a conspiracy theorist, someone who believes a conspiracy theory. But we particularists, those of us who are advocates of a non pejorative definition, are quite happy to say, look, I'm a conspiracy theorist, you're a conspiracy theorist, whether you're a good or bad conspiracy theorist is yet to be seen.
00:13:13
Speaker
Now, he then continues by saying, a natural thought is that theories that are generally referred to as conspiracy theories are not just theories about conspiracies. Now, the word natural is is a fairly loaded term in any context, although to be fair, I think we have seen a lot of times people starting a paper with the the intuition that that that conspiracy theories are something special.
00:13:41
Speaker
um are are inherently questionable or something that one might say mad, bad, and or dangerous. So it's it's possible that it's a common intuition naturally. It is, yes. And I think as intuitions go, it does seem to be the case that when people apply the label conspiracy theory at this time, and in most places we've investigated,
00:14:08
Speaker
people take it that conspiracy theories are not just theories about conspiracies. This is often taken to be the argument from ordinary language. We should be using the terms the way the folk use them. And I can be agnostic about ordinary usage because I argue that if we're going to engage in theoretically fruitful investigation of phenomena, sometimes it's necessary to divorce yourself from ordinary language and use terms in a stricter, more academic sense, which is why I tend to stipulate the meaning of conspiracy theory. You know, look, this may not match how the folk talk about these things, but we don't insist that scientists or psychologists use terms the way the folk do. We realize that they use specialized terminology to talk about the phenomena they're investigating. We can do the same thing with conspiracy theories.
Epistemological Critique
00:15:00
Speaker
But also I worry about this kind of natural thought style argument here, because if this is relying on the intuition of ordinary language users, one thing that linguists will tell you is that terms change over time.
00:15:17
Speaker
Just because people are using conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists now to mark out a class of theory that people take it to be mad, bad, or dangerous, doesn't mean that's always been the case, or that will be the case in future. And I think that means that's a bad argument to base a theory on. If language changes, then why rely on what the folk think? The folk are fickle.
00:15:47
Speaker
They sure are. But from here, he goes to now quote Brian Elkely, talking about his 2006 paper of conspiracy theories, which we've looked at. And he says that in this paper. No, of conspiracy theories would be 1999. Is he taking it from the Cody edited collection here?
00:16:08
Speaker
Because Of Conspiracy Theories is in the Journal of Philosophy in 1999. But David's book, Conspiracy Theories, The Philosophical Debate is, I think, around about 2006. And Of Conspiracy Theories gets reprinted there.
00:16:24
Speaker
That's probably the one then. But at any rate, it's that paper we've talked about before. um He says in this paper, Brian's concern is not with conspiracy theories in this neutral sense that what Brian's really interested in are those unwarranted conspiracy theories. And as I recall from that paper, it was really the mature unwarranted conspiracy theories that he was particularly interested in.
00:16:46
Speaker
But at any rate, Kasam says that Keeley's unwarranted conspiracy theories are the theories that are usually labeled conspiracy theories, which is a bit of a worry to begin with because he seems to be saying there that conspiracy theories are unwarranted by definition, although that kind of is his position later on. So Yeah, but I mean it's a worry here because he's going to argue that the epistemological approach towards talking about conspiracy theories is wrong-headed, and that we should use a political approach instead. But his definition of conspiracy theories just makes the epistemological approach kind of moot. Well look, if we just define conspiracy theories as being unwarranted,
00:17:26
Speaker
then we don't need to worry about the epistemology, we just need to be worried about the political use these things are used for, which means his entire arguments, as we're going to see about the epistemological approach, are kind of backdoored by the fact he snuck the his particular epistemological approach into the definition. Thus, we don't need to worry about the epistemology, we've already defined these theories as mad, bad, or dangerous in an epistemic sense. so Now, here's where um Kasam introduces the the the contrasting account to the neutral account. He says this we have the neutral account, all conspiracy theory, or conspiracy theory is just a theory about a conspiracy. Then he says there's the critical account, which is essentially this idea that theories, what what we call conspiracy theories are actually these unwarranted conspiracy theories, which I don't
00:18:19
Speaker
I don't really think that that wasn't really Brian's position so much. the that the The unwarranted ones were the species that he was particularly interested in, but I don't think he ever said that's what a conspiracy theory is. I mean, as I recall, though, from his old one, we did but we we saw at the time there were problems with the fact that people did misconstrue his work. duty Yeah, and I mean, I've admitted I misconstrued Brian's work. I think Lee Basham, in a similar way, misconstrued Brian's work at the time.
00:18:48
Speaker
But I think it's fairly clear, even if you do think that Of Conspiracy Theories is a generalist-infused paper towards conspiracy theories, which I don't think it is. I think it's a much more particular approach, but I can see that it was interpreted as being kind of one of the first generalist arguments at the time. It should be fairly clear from Brian's subsequent work that he's more of a fan of the neutral conception than the critical conception. And I say this because he co-wrote a chapter with me where we talk about conspiracy theories and appeals to expertise. So I don't think Kasam is getting Brian Wright in his 1999, in the first instance,
00:19:39
Speaker
But certainly if we take Brian's subsequent work, the idea that Brian is kind of advocating a critical account doesn't seem to ring true with the corpus of work he's produced. Yes. ah And then things go a little bit weirder again because he he gives a different definition of this sort of critical account of conspiracy theories. And it's his definition from his book, a slightly ah slightly streamlined version of it.
00:20:06
Speaker
He says, another critical account says that what is special about conspiracy theories is that they are speculative, based on conjecture rather than solid evidence, contrarian, contrary to the received wisdom, Baroque, extravagantly convoluted, amateurish, largely the work of amateurs rather than accredited specialists in the relevant subjects, and self-sealing immune to counter evidence. So he swapped esoteric for Baroque there, which he explains that move in a footnote, and also he's dropped to the pre-modern um But but it's but's it's essentially the definition that he gave in his book. And um straight away, there's again this idea that he starts playing fast and loose with his definitions, because I'm sure Brian Keeley would not
00:20:50
Speaker
define conspiracy theories that way. And yet he's saying that's just sort of another version of this critical theory, which he's already said is what Brian was talking about. So it seems a little bit Oh, yeah. Because I mean, if we think about the self ceiling aspect, Brian talks about the problem of falsifying conspiracy theories in his 1999 and then points out, well look, if the conspirators really are covering up what they're doing here, claiming that conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable, i.e. they are self-sealing, isn't a mark against a theory about an actual conspiracy. And given that Brian is really only interested in that paper, as we said before, in mature unwarranted conspiracy theories,
00:21:36
Speaker
conspiracy theories which seem to remain unwarranted over time because no positive evidence has accrued towards them. His interest is in how do we assess whether a conspiracy theory has matured, thus justifying a kind of deserved suspicion of those particular theories. So yeah, this does not seem like it's a similar definition along the same line as Bryan's.
00:22:05
Speaker
it's a very weird interpretation of Brian's work. And I'm not quite sure why Kasam is trying to piggyback on that, say, oh, I'm doing the same kind of work that Keeley did. And so at this point, he's defined his two approaches, there's there's the the neutral approach and the critical approach. And he he just kind of leaves it at that. He doesn't at any point, I think, in this paper,
00:22:29
Speaker
actually argue in favour of one or the other, say we should be using the neutral one or we should be using the critical one, although it seems fairly clear that he goes for the critical approach, that was his definition. Well, i mean i mean I mean, he doesn't explicitly say the neutral approach is wrong. As we're going to see, he's going to claim that proponents of the neutral approach are conspiracy apologists. And as we'll see at the very end of the paper, spoilers, conspiracy apologists are apologising for antisemitism,
00:22:58
Speaker
And that makes them bad people. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I think it's it's fairly you can infer fairly clearly that he thinks the critical approach is the right approach, but he never really. Yeah, he he never really spells that out. And then, of course, there's the fact that although a few times he will explicitly mention one of these approaches, most of the time he just uses the phrase conspiracy theory and never really makes it clear in the moment whether he's talking about the neutral definition of a conspiracy theory.
00:23:28
Speaker
or the critical definition of a conspiracy theory. He doesn't even have his his scheme of as you say with the conspiracy with a capital C and conspiracy without to distinguish between the two. So as we go through this a lot of the time we'll see we have to there'll be times where you just have to sort of infer okay he must be talking in the neutral sense here or he must be talking in the critical sense here but he he doesn't make things easy on us.
00:23:52
Speaker
No, he does not. So, still still um making the distinction clear at this point, he says proponents of the neutral view seek to normalise and legitimise belief in conspiracy theories. Again, the the neutral definition of conspiracy theory is what she does not quite make clear, he says, such conspiracy apologists see conspiracy theories as playing a positive role, that of raising questions about the conduct of those in positions of power. So yeah, apologists is a bit of a loaded term, and it really, yeah again, it doesn't make it clear that yes, they want to normalise and legitimise belief in conspiracy theories, but they mean that in this very neutral, general sense of the term.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, and normalize and legitimize are interesting terms here because what particulars are arguing is that we shouldn't have a dismissive attitude towards conspiracy theories. So on one level, yes, we are trying to normalize use of the term to rob it of its evaluative or pejorative aspect and thus legitimize the idea that there's nothing inherently wrong with conspiracy theorizing. But we're not trying to normalize and legitimize belief in conspiracy theories per se. That seems to be saying that we're doing a positive project of saying, look, if something is a conspiracy theory, then we should believe it and we should normalize belief in these things. It's it's slippery terminology here in that on one reading,
00:25:29
Speaker
It's correct, but on another reading, it's sneaking in this kind of agenda that we are conspiracy apologists. We want people to believe in conspiracy theories. We are promoting belief in these things, as opposed to simply saying, look, having a dismissive attitude towards conspiracy theories isn't great because it has a negative effect which is that sometimes people will get away with their conspiracies because they've been labeled as one of those conspiracy theories. Yes, so rounding out the section he says if a conspiracy theory is just an explanation of an event which cites conspiracy as a salient cause then it's difficult to see why conspiracy theories as such should be dismissed as unwarranted. Some conspiracy theories are plausible while others are not.
00:26:19
Speaker
On this view, the philosophy of conspiracy theories might be expected to identify, quote, the epistemic features which make belief in conspiracy theories plausible or implausible, a quote attributed once again to one M. Dentith. So there you go. for This M. Dentith is playing an outsized role in this article compared to the book.
00:26:38
Speaker
um And so he just finished off by saying he's now going to look at an epistemological account of conspiracy theories and then also a psychological and a political account. And spoilers, he's going to think very little of both the epistemologists and the psychologists. Yes, again again, no surprise if you think back to our review of his book. So the next section, the epistemology of conspiracy theories, I suspect this is the one we'll probably spend the most time on because it's the the the area that we're the most familiar with. But it starts, if conspiracy theories are truly just theories like any other, then there's no obvious a priori reason.
00:27:16
Speaker
to reject them in advance of detailed consideration of the evidential merits, unless they are self-contradictory. As with all theories that purport to explain a given event or type of event, there is the question whether the proposed explanation is a good one and whether acceptance of a given conspiracy theory is epistemically justified. And once again, quoting you, he gives your account of the the generalist versus the particularist views of conspiracy theories.
00:27:40
Speaker
and follows this up by saying the neutral conception of conspiracy theories makes particularism unavoidable if conspiracy theories can be warranted or unwarranted, who could object to the principle that every such theory should be assessed on its merits. However, he then turning to the critical approach, he says that this this This critical approach does not stipulate that conspiracy theories are false, but it does imply that they are suspect and unlikely to be true. It's not the fact that they are contrary contrary to the received wisdom or baroque that makes them suspect. Of greater significance is the fact that conspiracy theories in the critical sense are speculative, amateurish, and self-sealing.
00:28:18
Speaker
So still making the two approaches distinct here. Except that of course he's not, because he has kind of in the previous section implied quite strongly that conspiracy theories are by definition unwarranted. Yes. So there... At the start here he's still sort of keeping it a bit neutral, but yeah, yeah, as it goes. Yeah.
00:28:39
Speaker
um So in reference to those points he says conspiracy theories again in the critical sense are speculative because they rely on circumstantial rather than direct evidence. He says they're amateurish, um pointing out quote saying conspiracy apologists point to the uncovering of well-known conspiracies like Watergate but evidence of these conspiracies was discovered by well-placed individuals.
00:29:02
Speaker
journalists and whistleblowers relying on solid evidence are quite in familiar ways. For example, the two journalists to uncover the Watergate conspiracy, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, had a source, deep throat, in the White House. Although, as I recall from last time, we we talked that that Watergate really did seem to, at least to begin with, satisfy all of his definitions for one of his critical conspiracy theories.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, and this, once again, this just ignores the entire history of the unraveling of the Watergate scandal, in that A, Woodward and Bernstein were quite happy to say in all the President's men that for the first six months of their investigation, it was highly speculative and they had no direct evidence and they were going on hunches and gut feelings. And also when you actually look into Deep Throat, Deep Throat himself was fairly condemning of the kind of arguments and evidence that Woodward and Bernstein were using. Deep Throat was quite
00:30:03
Speaker
was Well, they say, look, you're going out on a limb here. so the idea so i mean So this entire description of Watergate here is just glossing over just how complicated Watergate is as a conspiracy theory that turned into an official theory over time.
00:30:22
Speaker
And then to that final final aspect of being self-sealing, he says, the sense in which conspiracy theories are self-sealing is that evidence that counters the theory is reinterpreted as originating from the conspiracy. And he talks about things we've seen in the papers before, how how um yeah absence of evidence will be interpreted as proof that conspirators ah exist and are covering their tracks. Contrary evidence will be interpreted as ah as a false playal false trail planted by conspirators.
00:30:50
Speaker
um It sounds like he's talking about fs falsifiability here, although he doesn't doesn't actually use this that word that i assume I assume we're talking about the same thing, are we? I mean, it does seem that by talking about conspiracy theories as being self-insulated beliefs, that you're saying, look, they are unfalsifiable beliefs. And as we've discussed multiple times in this podcast,
00:31:15
Speaker
The idea that falsifiability is a criterion we can use to distinguish between good conspiracy theories and bad conspiracy theories isn't very useful, in part because this kind of criteria isn't very useful for distinguishing between good or bad theories anyway, because any decent philosopher of science will point out most scientific investigation of theories is itself unfalsifiable,
00:31:42
Speaker
because working out what part of a theory, which is made up of constituent components, has been falsified by some kind of crucial experiment, is very difficult. And sometimes it is rational to go, well, look, this part of the theory is wrong, but that doesn't mean the overall theory is going to be wrong. It just means we're wrong about some of the sub-theories in our overall grander theory.
00:32:08
Speaker
So it's just not a good criteria. So these claims about falsifiability or self-sealingness, they just aren't very good markers of theories generally being bad, let alone conspiracy theories being bad.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yes, but nevertheless, he goes on to say, by these means, conspiracy theories become immune to refutation by counter-evidence, but theories that claim this kind of immunity are suspect, especially when their other characteristics are taken into account. To put it another way, a prima facie suspicion of conspiracy theories is justified in line with generalism, even if we are also then prepared to assess these theories on a case-by-case basis in accordance with particularism.
00:32:46
Speaker
It is possible to regard conspiracy theories as suspect, but still be willing to examine the merits of individual theories if only to establish whether one's initial suspicions were justified in a given case. Generalism and particularism are, in this sense, compatible.
00:33:00
Speaker
ah the sense being being suspicion of them, not as opposed to to to being having an attitude towards whether they're warranted or or reasonable, say. And once again, he's snuck into his his definition already that conspiracy theories are by definition unwarranted.
00:33:19
Speaker
Now, admittedly, he might be using unwarranted in the sense of not false. Sorry, I mean, he might be using unwarranted here not in the sense of false, but implausible to believe given the available evidence, because as I've argued in the past, unwarranted is a kind of an ambiguous term as to whether you mean unwarranted qua false or unwarranted qua unreasonable to believe given the available evidence here. But it does seem he's working with the false hypothesis here. So saying that there is a compatibility between generalism and particularism, given the story he's already told,
00:34:04
Speaker
doesn't seem to work. Yes, I mean, but he is really saying there that he he's giving this idea that conspiracy theories are all suspect, but you can be a particularist in in the fact that you investigate some of them, which I don't, yeah, that doesn't really sound like a particularist attitude. And then he also does another another slightly odd thing. He says underlying these concerns about a narrowly epistemological approach to conspiracy theories is a deeper point.
00:34:32
Speaker
This approach regards conspiracy theories as theories like any other, but this is hard to reconcile with the content of many actual conspiracy theories. And this idea, a narrowly epistemological approach, and going by the the the next sentence, i assume I assume by a narrowly epistemological approach, he means the neutral approach.
00:34:51
Speaker
I mean, ah that's what I also assume given the way the paper is written. But as you've already pointed out, it's a little bit vague as to what he's talking about post the initial discussion of the neutral versus critical approach. Because he's not really making a distinction about which one he's talking about at any given time. We can imply he thinks the critical approach is better But it's never outright stated. Rather, what you get is a whole bunch of arguments designed to undermine the conspiracy apologists who are promoting a neutral approach. Yeah. ah But so nevertheless, so he said there that the neutral approach says that conspiracy theories are theory just theories like any other.
00:35:39
Speaker
and should be treated as such but this is hard to reconcile with the content of many actual conspiracy theories. and Then he goes on to give examples of things like the protocols of the Others of Zion and all of their antisemitism which has his led right up to the modern day things like QAnon or at least bits of QAnon.
Political Role Examples
00:35:58
Speaker
ah He talks about Sandy Hook style false flag theories um which are their obvious, you know, in many cases quite clearly there are to preempt calls for tighter gun control. And he says of this, the key point for present purposes is that most conspiracy theories are political. To epistemologize them is to risk missing their point and overlooking their fundamentally ideological agendas.
00:36:20
Speaker
And so at this point, he looks at something which I hadn't seen before, but I assume you've, I i gather you you're familiar with it. but He looks at um this approach by Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum of what he calls, or what they call, conspiracy without the theory. He says, unlike classical conspiracy theorists who want academic respectability, you the new conspiracism, which the term will come up a bit,
00:36:47
Speaker
One of whose most notable exponents is Donald Trump is different, and now quoting Newerhead and Rosenblum, there is no punctilious demand for proofs, no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots to form a pattern, no close examination of the operators plotting in the shadows. The new conspiracies and dispensers with the burden of explanation. Instead, we have innuendo and verbal gesture. A lot of people are saying, or we have bare assertion, rigged.
00:37:13
Speaker
What validates the new conspiracism is not evidence but repetition. The new conspiracism, or accusation and no evidence, substitutes social validation for scientific validation. If a lot of people are saying it, to use Trump's signature phrase, then it's true enough.
00:37:28
Speaker
so As well as this idea of conspiracy conspiracy without the theory. This is also the first time the term conspiracism pops up in this paper and it's not really defined. I assume by conspiracism he just means believing in conspiracy theories.
00:37:44
Speaker
Heron lies the rub. It's not quite clear in the literature what people mean by conspiracism. Sometimes conspiracism simply means conspiracy theorizing. Sometimes conspiracism is akin to a conspiracy mindset, the idea that you are predisposed to believe in clusters of conspiracy theories.
00:38:07
Speaker
And sometimes it's used interchangeably for both ideas, both belief in individual conspiracy theories and a mindset that leads you to form conspiracy theory beliefs. Now Muirhead and Rosenbloom's approach that the idea that there are some conspiracy theories that exist now sans any evidence is interesting.
00:38:31
Speaker
It's also not exactly conclusive. Steve Clark wrote a withering takedown of Muirhead and Rosenblum's book for the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, so there are philosophers who have responded to their argument and gone. They're basically, A, misconstruing what's going on in a lot of these political debates, and B, also making this out to be something which is new and novel,
00:38:58
Speaker
But actually, this has been part of political rhetoric for a very long time. And maybe it's interesting that people like Trump are dressing their conspiracy rhetoric up in the guise of the language of conspiracy theories. But we should be more concerned about the political rhetoric part rather than the use of conspiracy theories to labour that rhetoric.
00:39:22
Speaker
So there are there are two issues here. A, you're quite right, it's not clear what conspiracism is, and this will be a problem for the next section, because Kasam's going to talk about conspiracy mentalities, which is going to kind of poo-poo, and yet arguably, when promoting the new conspiracism, he's going ya yay-yay.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yes, so there's that, and we're going to be talking about this this new conspiracism further on in the later sections. But right now, Kasam says that this this new conspiracism is a problem for the neutral approach because, as he says, conspiracy apologists, and again, were we wereit but the two seem to be synonymous at this point. People who take the neutral approach are conspiracy apologists.
00:40:05
Speaker
He says conspiracy apologists demand that conspiracy theories not be rejected without an appropriate evaluation of the evidence, but this demand makes no sense when no evidence is offered. New conspiracism is immune to counter evidence because it was never based on evidence in the first place. Conspiracy apologists see conspiracy theories as playing the positive role of raising questions about the conduct of those in positions of power, yet the leading new conspiracist was the president of the USA.
00:40:30
Speaker
Now let's just note, conspiracy apologists apparently see conspiracy theories as playing a positive role. That's not a claim that particularists make. Particularists simply make the claim that being dismissive of conspiracy theories plays a negative role.
00:40:49
Speaker
And that, yes, it might be good to entertain conspiracy theories to work out whether they are good or bad. But it's not quite going as far as this positive agenda that Kasam is putting forward here. So, as we're going to see, I think Particularists can deal with this. Yes, he does basically seem to be putting general claims into the mouths of Particularists here.
00:41:16
Speaker
um At this point, talking about the new conspiracism, he says its it has more in common with rumours, which I thought was interesting, because have it isn't that something you've looked at in the past? Yeah, one of the first things I ever published was a book a book i got say a book chamber, an entire chamber of book, a book chapter.
00:41:33
Speaker
on rumor mongering and comparing it with things like gossip and conspiracy theorizing because I mean I take it that room room room ring is a fact detecting process if I hear a rumor then I'll express that rumor to someone else and if someone has a knockdown objection to the rumor then my rumor mongering stops at that point But if I express that rumor to you and you go, oh, yes, I've heard something similar, then I've got grounds to go, maybe this should be investigated slightly further. But of course, the problem is rumor is one of those things which sometimes has a pejorative aspect associated with it. And so there are different accounts of rumor, a generalist and a particularist account.
00:42:21
Speaker
So this is comes to the end of the section on the epistemology of conspiracy theories. He finishes by pointing out that Muirhead and Rosenblum also say that, quote, the new conspiracism sheds political theory. Now, because I'm not so sure about that, because obviously we know he thinks conspiracy theories are thoroughly political, um but that can wait until part four. but but be a But before we get to part four, just let me say, Kasam takes it that the new conspiracism, if it were a thing, would be a problem for the particularists, because we would be defending conspiracy theorizing, but much conspiracy theorizing occurs without evidence, so we would be defending the promotion of non-evidentially based conspiracy theories. And of course, the particularists can simply respond by saying, look,
00:43:14
Speaker
All we're saying is that if someone offers a conspiracy theory then we need to assess it on its evidential merits to work out whether it's a good conspiracy theory or a bad one. If people are putting forward conspiracy theories sans evidence I suspect most, if not all, particulars are going to go, well, that's just a bad conspiracy theory because there's there are no particular bits of evidence for us to assess. If you're simply saying, well, um so I believe that alien shapeshifting reptiles control the British monarchy, why do you believe that? I've got a gut instinct about this.
00:43:52
Speaker
Most particulars will say, well, that that's not a good, evidential base for putting forward a conspiracy theory there. So even if I were someone who normally promotes conspiracy theorizing, I'm not promoting that kind of conspiracy theorizing because particularism requires us to assess conspiracy theories on the evidence. And you, sir, you, sir, you, sir, have no evidence, sir. I say good day, sir. I say good day.
00:44:18
Speaker
Yes, it does sound a little bit like a gotcha. If if you say, oh, oh, political, you you think you think they should be evaluated on their evidence, well, what if there's no evidence? And I, yeah, it sounds like, you well, yeah, that's like that's bad. That's not, but that doesn't s stump us. That's like, no evidence is almost as bad or maybe even worse than bad evidence.
00:44:40
Speaker
If we take the analogy here, that particular concern that we should treat conspiracy theories like any other kind of theory, a particular will say, look, a scientific theory, which is entirely based upon a scientist hunch with no experimental evidence whatsoever,
00:44:57
Speaker
Probably gonna say it's a bad theory. A psychological theory which is just generated sans evidence, also a bad theory. Historical theory that someone just has to hunch about, also a bad theory. If you're not offering evidence for your theories, particularists are going to go, well, those are just bad theories. Where's the evidence? Where's the beef? Exactly.
00:45:22
Speaker
ah So we lead into the next section, Kasan points out that Muir-Hed and Rosenblum also talk about the conspiracist mindset, and that's what we start looking at in the next section, the psychology of conspiracy theories. So it starts by talking about Ted Goertzel's paper, Belief in Conspiracy Theories, which is not one that we have looked at particularly, but it has been referred to by other papers we've looked at. Goertzel was a name I recognized.
00:45:47
Speaker
This is a paper that takes a survey with a very small sample size and takes it that because people in that group believe one conspiracy theory and a whole host of other ones, generally conspiracy theorists are people who once they believe one conspiracy theory can be induced or are induced to believe in a whole lot of other cons conspiracy theories. It's the beginning of the monological belief system within the psychology of conspiracy theory theory. Goetzel doesn't originate the monological belief system. It's a different Goetzel who actually comes up with that. Ted is simply the person who applies it to conspiracy theories and belief of them in psychology.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yes, Casson points out that that this this paper, Belief in Conspiracy Theories, he credits that with ah a bit of an explosion in psychological sort of research and academia into conspiracy theories um and and points out that there's a lot of it these days.
00:46:50
Speaker
Now, really it really started to become apparent to me in this section that he's just he just talks about conspiracy theories all the way through and never really sees what he means by conspiracy theories. Is he using a neutral definition or is he using a critical definition? Looks like it's the critical definition most of the time, but sometimes it's not quite clear. Now, he says, um talking about the kind of the psychology of conspiracy theories,
00:47:15
Speaker
Research in this area, which has been further stimulated by conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, has been dominated by two ideas. The first is that conspiracy theorising is partly the result of what Rob Brotherton describes as some of our brain's quirks and foibles. The second is that belief in conspiracy theories is a matter of personality and that there are measurable individual differences in people's willingness to accept conspiracy theories.
00:47:40
Speaker
So this is the idea that there is such a thing as a conspiracy mentality or a conspiracy mindset. um And this means that, as Kassam says, knowing that a person is conspiracy-minded enables one to predict their response to a conspiracy theory they have not come across before. So he looks at this in a bit more detail. that Those quirks and foibles he mentioned before that lead to conspiracy theorising include things like intentionality bias, confirmation bias, proportionality bias, the idea that big events must have big causes.
00:48:10
Speaker
all all um cognitive biases that I think most people have heard about these days. The problem, though, there is that everybody has these cognitive biases. That's just a thing. But we're not all conspiracy theorists. So so how do you explain that? Well, Kasam says that this confuses the idea that we all believe some theories about conspiracies with the notion that we are all conspiracy theorists in the special sense in which people who believe that 9-11 was an inside job are conspiracy theorists, which That was interesting. There he's actually chiding people for confusing the neutral and the critical approaches when um that seems to be a large chunk of this paper. And also it's quite clear he doesn't really understand what psychologists are talking about when they say someone has a conspiracy mindset which may be based upon personality, traits or traits.
00:49:03
Speaker
So I mean, often when you get into discussion about the dark triad and its involvement in belief and conspiracy theories, the dark triad is narcissism, schizotypy and Machiavellianism. And psychologists will point out everybody has some degree of a Machiavellian schizotypic or narcissistic narcissistic personality. Everybody suffers, front suffers is a weird word to use here, everybody has this to some degree. The issue is the dark triad is when people score on all three highly, then you get
00:49:41
Speaker
a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. And so everybody also has some degree of an intentionality bias, a confirmation bias, and a proportionality bias. These things can be moderated by things like age and education,
00:50:00
Speaker
And some people are more or less predisposed to weigh them in a greater or lesser extent. It's only when you have a particular combination of the three that you then get, according to the psychologists who are interested in conspiracy mindsets or conspiracy mentalities,
00:50:19
Speaker
a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Because the thing that Kasam is riding roughshade over here is that a conspiracy mentality or mindset doesn't tell you, you must believe in conspiracy theories. It simply tells you that you have a preponderance or tendency to believe conspiracy theories. It may never be actuated.
00:50:45
Speaker
And some people who also don't score highly on these things may also believe conspiracy theories for other reasons. But nevertheless, he he so having made that point, he returns to the question. We all have cognitive biases, but we're not all conspiracy theorists in the critical sense. So what's up with that? He says,
00:51:06
Speaker
which I think is is kind of the point you just made, cognitive bias approaches are not committed to regarding generic cognitive biases as sufficient for belief in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, it remains true that in the rush to explain belief in conspiracy theories, psychological accounts are in danger of forgetting that increasingly neglected but widespread phenomenon of disbelief in conspiracy theories. The more natural belief in conspiracies is held to be, the more mysterious it seems that millions of people do not believe them.
00:51:34
Speaker
Again, we're talking about conspiracy theories in the critical sense here, but if we have an account that makes it that we believe in conspiracy theories, well, there are lots of people that don't, again, believe in conspiracy theories in the critical sense. But once again, also define it also depends on how you define a conspiracy theory in the first instance.
00:51:53
Speaker
um But so so he he goes through this conspiracy mindedness rather than being a result of cognitive biases as a personality trait, then that could be a better explanation since we don't all have the same person yeah know we may all have the same cognitive biases, we don't all have the same personalities. And then then then we start looking at those various psychological studies that we've seen a bunch before and we're not impressed by. So the talk of monological belief systems,
00:52:16
Speaker
ah So the people yeah people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in other conspiracy theories. Again, conspiracy theory in the critical sense, critical definition of the word. He talks about the study that people will believe in contradictory conspiracy theories, which we've looked at a couple of times before. And short answer, no, they don't. that's ah It was a misinterpretation of the results of the study. um The idea that people will believe in fictitious conspiracy theories So they they they studies where they've made up a conspiracy theory and asked people. And and this, again, it's glossed over fairly quickly. And it's not quite clear if it's you tell people a a fictitious conspiracy theory and they say, yes, I believe that is true. Or if you say people give people a fictitious conspiracy theory and they say, yeah, that could be true. I'd be willing to believe that, which is a much different claim.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, which gets into a particular issue of psychologists sometimes don't seem to understand that belief doesn't mean a sincere or committed belief. And also a factor in the way that Likert scales are used. Well, dear, my English language skills are terrible today. The way that Likert scales are used, where it's usually a seven point scale, sometimes a five point scale between one disagree, sorry strongly disagree, seven strongly agree, is that often one and two and six and seven are kind of conflated to be the same thing. So people who are going well I agree that I believe it but I don't strongly agree because oh we're going to treat your agree as being strongly agree.
00:53:58
Speaker
and there are big debates as to whether ah that is actually warping the results by going well you're just assuming that people who agree with claims would also strongly agree with claims but actually in many cases people might only agree with claims to go and well look I think it's true, I'm fairly sure it's true, but I'm also just about aware that I might be wrong. But even even so, even if if if we go for this thing that their personality traits can explain why some people are more willing to believe conspiracy theories than others,
00:54:32
Speaker
even Even in this case, conspiracy minded people don't believe just any and all conspiracy theories. And one thing he points out is that the the the divisions you see um between sort of your liberals and conservatives, conservatives are much more likely to be Obama birthers, for instance.
00:54:51
Speaker
Whereas apparently 9-11 truthers tend to be more liberal, or at least certainly, um if if it's the side that's opposed, the species of 9-11 trutherism that's particularly opposed to George W. Bush's administration. So how do we account for this? He says, the explanation is political. The particular conspiracy theories of any to which people are drawn are the ones that accord with their broader political or ideological commitments.
00:55:16
Speaker
The if-any there is a bit weird. The particular conspiracy theory is if-any to which people are drawn are the ones with accord with their broader political or ideological commitments. So he's saying that that there might not be any a political explanation at all that if we're going to explain belief in conspiracy theories the best account is political but it might not apply the best account may not apply so we may have the best account but it may not actually apply to belief in conspiracy theories all we can say is the epistemological and psychological accounts are worse the political account may not actually even be true but it is still better seems to be what he's implying yeah or
00:55:56
Speaker
At the very least, it seemed like he was breaking out of that idea of ah particular that we're talking about particular personality traits that are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. And maybe we're now just talking about any old people, some of whom believe... I don't know. he alsos say he doesn't When he talks about belief of conspiracies being broken down,
00:56:19
Speaker
In certain ways, he only ever talks about them being broken down in political terms, left versus right. or and I guess he did say that ones that accord with the broader political or ideological commitments, idea ideology, I suppose, is a lot broader than just politics. So maybe that's maybe that that that explains it. But he only ever really seems to talk about people's political position influencing what what conspiracy theories they believe in.
00:56:45
Speaker
Now, after all of this, he says, this is also the lesson of belief in the protocols of the elders of Zion. Regardless of whether Hitler was conspiracy minded, it would be perverse to explain his belief in this theory without mentioning that the fact that it was integral to his Nazi ideology.
00:57:01
Speaker
Hitler was receptive to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories because he was anti-Semitic. This is an essentially ideological explanation of his commitment to a particular conspiracy theory, though it leaves open the question why some people are susceptible to Nazi ideology. Even if being attracted to extremist ideologies is a personality trait, there's still the question why people are attracted to one extremist ideology in particular.
00:57:21
Speaker
There's considerable historical evidence of a link between conspiracy theories and extremism. It's possible to be a conspiracy theorist without being a political extremist, but most political extremists are conspiracy theorists. Political extremism is a risk factor for conspiracism and vice versa. It is a weakness of psychological approaches that they neglect to the ideological foundations of conspiracy theorising. A more overtly political perspective is needed, which leads us into the next section, but I think you had something to say about that.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yeah, because it's fairly clear he's going, look, the neutral conception, which the epistemologists seem to be engaging in, is bad. And so we need a critical conception, which he's going, well, look, it does seem like the psychologists are engaging in a kind of critical view here. But it's the wrong critical view. They want to do it by personality traits. And that doesn't get us the right kind of results, because a political story would be better.
00:58:15
Speaker
Now, I have been critical of conspiracy mindset stuff in psychology in the past, but as I said before, Kasam seems to be overlooking the fact that psychologists are not saying personality traits predict belief in conspiracy theories in a strong sense.
00:58:33
Speaker
What they're saying is that personality trays are, and I'm using trait and trays. It's changeably here because I'm both a philosopher and someone who did anthropology at university and the anthropologists are all American and they say tray rather than trait. It's very confusing.
00:58:48
Speaker
The psychologists are talking about these personality traits or traits as being something which leads you towards belief in conspiracy theories. It's not a decisive factor, except in cases where you've got extreme personality traits. It is something which just gives you a pre ah a tendency or preponderance of belief in conspiracy theories or clusters thereof.
00:59:14
Speaker
But maybe the bigger issue is it's not clear that psychologists, or at least all psychologists, are taking a critical approach. Because one of the leading lights in discussions of conspiracy mentalities is Roland Emhoff. And in a paper that was published at the, well, actually at the beginning of this year, Emhoff writes the following.
00:59:44
Speaker
One aspect that deserves particular attention is the contamination of specific conspiracy belief with low truth value. Items tapping into conspiracy mentality, on the other hand, are not prima facie right or wrong, but reflect different world views. While some authors have argued that it is a downside of the conspiracy mentality concept, that it does not entail the tendency to subscribe to normatively weak beliefs, I would argue that this is a strength.
01:00:13
Speaker
only a subset of specific conspiracy theories are normatively implausible beliefs. Although, arguably, these are the ones most frequently studied and most resonant of lay understanding of the term, there are a number of conspiracy theories that have evidence in their favour, that the Nazis conspired to annihilate European jury, that Mohammed Atta and other al-Qaeda terrorists plotted in secret to fly passenger planes into the World Trade Centre,
01:00:43
Speaker
or that a group of members of the Nixon administration secretly wiretapped and broke into the headquarters of the Democratic Party. What these conspiracy theories have in common is that they are well accepted and there is good evidence for their accuracy. Nevertheless, believing in them suggests believing in secret coordination and cover-up. We would thus expect them to be associated with conspiracy mentality as well.
01:01:10
Speaker
On the flip side, the frequently reported association of conspiracy belief with low cognitive skills or more intuitive and less analytic processing might just be an artifact of choosing and plausible conspiracy theories as items. That sounds like particular results. It certainly does.
01:01:32
Speaker
And it's also saying, look, if you only focus on certain examples, and in Kotham's case, focus on examples which have clearly anti-Semitic or good reason to believe they have crypto anti-Semitic content, then sure, you can generate a theory which says, look, extremism and anti-Semitism is linked to a particular kind of belief in conspiracy theories.
01:01:59
Speaker
But if that's an artifact of the examples you're using, and not a consequence of the theory that you're advocating, that is a problem. And that's the problem of the next section. Yes, so as he said at the end of this one, a more more overtly political perspective is needed, and that leads him into the the fourth and final section, the politics of conspiracy theories.
01:02:22
Speaker
He starts by saying one way that conspiracy theories can be political is by giving expression to a more or less specific political ideology, thus the protocols of the elders of Zion as an expression of the ideology of anti-Semitism. A different way for conspiracy theories to be political is for them to have a political agenda.
01:02:39
Speaker
In this section, we can probably, I sort of skipped over it fairly quickly, because it's basically a restatement of his arguments from the book, which we spent to emphasize looking at this idea that conspiracy theories are political propaganda, which he calls the propaganda model. And not just political propaganda, right wing, political propaganda. So even if you are a progressive, who thinks you have a left wing conspiracy theory, you don't. It's a right wing conspiracy theory.
01:03:05
Speaker
Yes, so he sort of he he goes through all the points we've seen before. he He points out that some conspiracy theorists believe they're in theories while others do not. He again gives the examples of of Sandy Hook. He says he talks about propaganda, saying propaganda is the deliberate attempt to alter, reinforce or otherwise affect a person's political views and conduct by manipulating the emotions.
01:03:25
Speaker
um He repeats the claim, for instance, that this will almost be word for might be word for word from the book, ah that the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist who sincerely believes the whole thing was a hoax will be no less effective at getting the anti-gun control message across than an insincere proponent of the same view. However, his sincerity does not mean what he says is not propaganda.
01:03:45
Speaker
ah Interesting, he uses the term conspiracy entrepreneurs for these people who promote i promoteked conspiracy theories specifically because they want to get across a political idea and the implication being that they may not don't actually believe these theories, they're just using them as a means to an end. Conspiracy entrepreneur was, get spoilers for the bonus episode, but that was something that came up in I think the chapter of your book yes Yes, so there's a ah ah the work of Jaron Harabin is very good here although Kasam is talking here about Sunstein and Vermule and their discussion of entrepreneurs instead.
01:04:27
Speaker
In this section he says conspiracy theories are stories and the most seductive conspiracy theories have the emotional appeal of certain kinds of fiction. He talks a bit about the the story nature of it relating to that and propaganda. Again he has a go at those those dang conspiracy apologists with the idea being that they they are implicitly excusing anti-Semitism and other other dodgy ideologies. He says If conspiracy theories are political propaganda, then conspiracy apologists risk being apologists for or associating themselves with the causes that conspiracy theories promote. Many of these are extremist or racist causes. So quite once again, conspiracy apologists seems to mean person who takes the neutral approach to conspiracy theories. That's that's just it.
01:05:11
Speaker
He says anti-Semitism is part of the historical DNA of conspiracy theories, many of which still explicitly or implicitly identified the Jews as the villains of their stories. It's difficult to make excuses for conspiracy theories without also, at least implicitly, making excuses for the anti-Semitic tropes and motifs that have dominated the conspiracy tradition throughout its history. And again, this like's's it's only difficult to do that if you're making excuses for conspiracy theories in general, but Not if you're making, yeah if if if you think, if you have to take a particularist approach towards conspiracy theories, then that doesn't seem to be a danger. If you're saying these particular historical ones are fine because they are well evidenced and we all know that they're true, then you're not excusing anything.
01:05:56
Speaker
And also in danger of saying something which might get a person and cancelled, the idea that conspiracy theories are inherently anti-Semitic, or even mostly anti-Semitic, can get in the sea. People who make those claims don't seem to know about the wealth or diversity.
01:06:17
Speaker
of conspiracy theories. Yes it is true, in a lot of western political rhetoric over the course of the 19th, 20th and unfortunately the 21st century, certain conspiracy theorist entrepreneurs have turned out to be anti-Semites who are using conspiracy theories to launder their anti-Semitism by implying that the people behind the conspiracy are those perfidious jewish people But that isn't the sum total of conspiracy theories. And I would argue actually isn't even the majority of conspiracy theory belief or even insincere promotion of conspiracy theories. Casam is fairly clearly indicating that most conspiracy theories are anti-Semitic and that is a good reason to try to chide people from being conspiracy apologists.
01:07:15
Speaker
I just don't think that's true. There's certainly a significant subset of conspiracy theories that are anti-Semitic or have anti-Semitic roots, but yeah, they're not the whole of the story.
01:07:27
Speaker
There was a discussion at the reading group I run, which occurred earlier this week, where we were talking about QAnon and the paper we were reading made the claim that QAnon is obviously an antisemitic theory. One of the people in the group was going, well, why would you make that claim? And I was going, well, it's because QAnon is a pedophilic satanic conspiracy theory. And some people make the claim that those are inherently anti-Semitic conspiracy theories because of blood libel claims and rumors about Jewish people kidnapping Christian children in the past. And one of the people in the group was going, well, these people need to look into things like the Know Nothing movement back in the United States because they were making claims about children being kidnapped and being indoctrinated, but they were making those claims about Catholics.
01:08:23
Speaker
And at the time they're making those claims about Catholics, Catholics are very anti-Semitic. So they're making claims about Catholics and anti-Semitic group. And why not make the claim the QAnon thing is actually she and is a she has crypto-anti-Catholic elements, given that, yes, it is true that stealing children views have been common to a large number of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but it's actually been a cultural use to attack others in a community for a whole bunch of people in different cultures at different times. Yeah, I mean maybe you could talk about sort of the genealogy of them and and that yes, the this this is and this isn't an antisemitic conspiracy theory, it's an anti-semite conspiracy theory.
01:09:13
Speaker
Double negative makes sense here, which could be a result of, oh, you're saying these people do these horrible things. No, it's not, it's you're saying we do these horrible things. No, it's not us who does them, it's you who does them. So it is still sort of descended, I don't know, but anyway, yeah, it's certainly, it's not it's not ah conspiracy theories as a whole. Now, having laid out his idea of the propaganda model of conspiracy theories, he then does look at a few sort of questions that could be asked of this.
01:09:42
Speaker
he considers the question, how does the propaganda model of conspiracy theories account for the fact that some conspiracy theories have no political content? and Here he sort of says, well, maybe maybe maybe maybe you can point to some that don't have any political content, but conspiracy theories are, quote, generally political.
01:09:59
Speaker
And there's just that that even if you do have actually apolitical conspiracy theories, they can kind of function like a gateway drug. So there's still ah they can still be a bad thing because they may get you into the the the overtly political conspiracy theories. And he see also replies that by saying that some theories that seem apolitical often have a political angle. So looking at, say, I think he gives the example of the moon landing um conspiracy theories or anti-vax stuff, where on the surface of it, the idea that the US government faked the moon landing may not be, um I mean it's about the government, but it's not it's not it's not talking about pushing forward a political ideology, but then you get into the whole cover-up aspect of it.
01:10:39
Speaker
you know, once you look at why why does why why do we not believe that this thing really happened, and then you get into the idea of a cover-up, and so then you you do end up getting political in the end of it. So that's his that's his account. There's a weird bullet-biting exercise that also goes on here. So in the book, when Kasam talks about this, he admits that there are some quite clear cases of conspiracy theories with a capital C and a capital T which are not political and content and the example he puts forward is the Elvis is dead set of conspiracy theories going well look
01:11:13
Speaker
quite clearly non-political, bit of an exception but the exception proves the rule. In this paper he says look the theory that Elvis faked his own disappearance is barely a conspiracy theory since there cannot be a conspiracy of one. So he's trying to define Elvis faking his death theories as not being conspiracy theories but going well look If you believe Elvis faked his death, it's not a conspiracy because Elvis acted alone. There was no one helping him. Now, I'm sure that there are some people who do believe that Elvis faked his own death and did it in the middle of the night and no one else was aware, but the majority of Elvis faked his own death conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that say that either
01:12:02
Speaker
Lisa Marie Presley knew of the faking because she helped him with it and his Manager who I want to call Colonel Sanders because I know he had a manager called the colonel at some point tom And I can't remember yes so yes, so Colonel Sanders from KFC was also involved in faking like just of el yeah and Well, he thought he thought faking is deathless finger-licking goods as did the king So most of the conspiracy theories about Elvis faking his own death are conspiracy theories involving more than just Elvis here. But Kasam just defines them away by going, look, so it's barely a conspiracy if he acted on his own. case Yeah, if you tell the story that way, there are a lots of things we can say are barely a conspiracy because ah JFK being well, I mean, so JFK being shot is not a conspiracy theory.
01:12:57
Speaker
if you believe the official theory, which is Lee Harvey Oswald working on his own, but if you believe the conspiracy theory was that JFK faked his own death by pretending to be shot, then you can define that away by saying it's barely a a can a cons conspiracy, even though there had to be a lot of people helping with that, given it was a very visual event.
01:13:18
Speaker
Yes, so there's that bit, but then he he then also looks at the the sort of potential challenge for the propaganda model, which is, what is the propaganda model's take on new conspiracism? In particular, how does it respond to the suggestion that this form of conspiracism is not ideological? as Recall from that that earlier segment that they said that this new conspiracism is not ideological, and he wasn't too clear about that. So here he sets this out. he says this this these these new conspiracism style of conspiracy theories might not be theories as such but they are still quote embedded in a right-wing political tradition and have something that is recognisable as an ideology. Now those are just weasel words because
01:13:58
Speaker
ideology and theory might well be the same thing. If it turns out that someone's polemic comes out of their ideology, and the ideology is a theoretical right-wing political construct, the fact we call it an ideology doesn't deny the idea that it's also not a theory in some sense.
01:14:20
Speaker
So essentially he's going, Muberhead and Rosenblum are right to say that conspiracy theories are offered without any kind of evidential background. But actually they also they might also be enmeshed in an ideology or a theory. And that is actually a kind of evidence that comes to bear when assessing whether a particular polemic stance is good or bad. You can't really have it both ways.
01:14:45
Speaker
Well, he says to resolve this issue, greater clarity would be required about what constitutes a theory and what it is to have a theory, which was my sort of reaction to the whole new conspiracism thing anyway. The conspiracy without the theory... well So essentially he's praised the new conspiracism and then pulled the rug out from under it when it's no longer necessary for his own theory.
01:15:08
Speaker
And finally, he he considers the question, does the propaganda model rule out the possibility of conspiracy theories serving as propaganda for progressive causes? If so, is it right to rule this out? Now he doesn't, as far like as I can see, he doesn't explicitly answer that question. But the the ah the implied answer is no, it does not rule out the possibility of conspiracy theories for for progressive causes. But he he basically does this just by going on to talk about how progressive conspiracy theories are just as bad as right wing ones.
01:15:36
Speaker
and he he he finishes everything up. He he rejects the defense with which you mentioned earlier that progressive conspiracy theories are okay because they hold governments to account, which again I don't think is really what particularists say. But this all leads to his the conclusion of the paper which reads,
01:15:54
Speaker
Given what is known about the history of conspiracy theories and the political agendas of some of the most influential conspiracy theories, it is remarkable that people who see themselves as politically progressive continue to expend intellectual energy on defending belief in conspiracy theories. They may say they are not committed to defending every conspiracy theory and that they are entitled to reject a conspiracy theory on its evidential merits. however Even to talk about the evidential merits of a theory like QAnon is all ready to concede too much. The evidence for a theory is evidence of its truth, but theories like QAnon are barely candidates for truth. Conspiracy theories which promote extremist anti-Semitic ideologies need to be called out for doing so, and for all philosophers whose analyses even unwittingly give sucker to such theories should know better. Ooh, you bitch.
01:16:40
Speaker
m That was a quite a yeah quite ah quite a sting in the tail there. This idea defending belief in conspiracy theories, if they may say they're not committed to defending, yougo of course that's what they say if they're if they're particularists. that That is very explicitly the idea that particularists are defending belief in conspiracy theories is just not a thing at all.
01:17:05
Speaker
So yeah, it does it really does seem to be, it's I don't know, was it is it a is it an argument by association or something? It seems like rather than arguing against the particularist position, he's sort of associating it with evil things like anti-Semitism and saying therefore it's bad. yes Yes, it's essentially saying that look, conspiracy apologists qua the particulars are engaging in unbecoming behaviour and thus we should shame them into shutting up.
01:17:33
Speaker
It wasn't quite clear why he leans on progressive theories to make this point. If if he's rejecting the idea that yeah here's specifically rejecting the idea that progressive that that you might want to defend progressive conspiracy theories by saying they hold governments to account, I don't see why you need to focus on progressive conspiracies for that anyway. Conservative conspiracy theories would certainly be good at holding left-wing governments to account or right-wing governments really.
01:18:01
Speaker
yeah i mean Arguably many of the unwarranted and deservedly suspicious Republican conspiracy theories are all about how the government is doing bad things and they are calling them out for account. They might well be wrong, in fact I think they are wrong, but often they are about this government is doing bad things and therefore we need to stop them from doing those bad things.
01:18:25
Speaker
Yes, it it saved from if I'm reading it, if I'm understanding this, i I think where it was coming from was that conservative conspiracy theories are all anti-Semitic and therefore just inherently bad, but progressive ones are also inherently bad anyway. I think that's where he was coming from. And genealogically, those progressive conspiracy theories probably have anti-Semitic origins.
01:18:51
Speaker
because they are still functioning as a form of propaganda. You're trying to alter someone's beliefs. And given that propaganda is inherently right-wing and inherently anti-Semitic, even progressive conspiracy theories are going to be tarnished with that history of anti-Semitism. So, yeah, don't promote left-wing conspiracy theories. It makes you just as bad as the right-wing conspiracy theorists. yeah So yes, I think overall in ah in in the condensed format of ah a paper rather than a whole book, I think that this felt like it came off a lot lot worse. um It really became apparent there was some dodgy argumentation going on. ah There was a lot of, like to to to take a a um ah charitable reading of it, you really have to do a lot of inferring at every point exactly what definition he's using at any time and so on. He doesn't make it clear.
01:19:47
Speaker
at all, most of the time. So yeah, I thought that was a ah very, very, like, I found previous papers we've looked at unconvincing. I thought this one was just kind of bad. It is.
01:20:01
Speaker
It is a very weird summary of the book in that it highlights the bits of the book, which I think really don't understand the literature, all the kind of examples we should be using to talk about conspiracy theories. So, yeah, it is not a paper I have i have any fondness for, even though it is a paper which has increased my H index, unlike the book. I'm sure it would have.
01:20:28
Speaker
So, we have some news, but now that I look at it, I wonder if maybe we should save this for the next episode and actually do a whole episode talking about this sort of stuff, because the news probably isn't going anywhere. What do you think? No, and given that we've talked about side projects i say side projects of this news related projects to this news it might be good to kind of incorporate it into those stories and put them into one place so yes I think yeah the mysterious object of which we were going to speak
01:21:05
Speaker
must remain mysterious for another fortnight. I will say hat tip to a friend of the podcast Hayden who alerted me to this bit of news from the further that occurred during this week. So he knows what we're talking about. But um yeah, I think I think we'll leave that and and um I think we can I think it's main episode. Yeah, not just news. Make it big news. Main episode news.
01:21:28
Speaker
Which means that we can draw this episode to a close with, of course, the usual, not not disclaimer, the usual, the usual eggs-hortation. to become a patron so you can- Exhortation. Is that some kind of French dish? Ah, yes monsieur. Here is your exhortation. Away with you, David Suchet. I wish to exhort you to become a patron so you can listen to our patron bonus episode, which this time will be a discussion of chapter two of Enn's forthcoming book. And what may or may not- Well, you say forthcoming, yeah, book. Book which I am writing, which will hopefully become a forthcoming book at some point.
01:22:08
Speaker
So there's that. And so if you want to become a patron, go to patreon.com. Look for the podcast as kind to the conspiracy. But to to to to patrons and non patrons, one and all, ah thank you for listening to this episode. Regardless, we'll have an interesting, mysterious topic for you next time. But until then, I shall just say goodbye.
01:22:28
Speaker
And I should say, the little grey cells, they tell me that I have to remember to say goodbye as well. But I cannot work out how one says goodbye in Belgium. So I will simply say, ex-hortation, my friend.
01:22:44
Speaker
The podcast is Guide to the Conspiracy, stars Josh Addison and myself. associate professor, M. R. X. Denton. Our show's cons... sorry, producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor. You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider joining our Patreon.
01:23:23
Speaker
And remember, keep watching the skis.