Comm 301-50: Fake News & Misinformation Conspiracy Theory Artifact Analysis and Presentation (150 Points) This assignment is designed to help you apply what you’ve learned about conspiracy theory to an actual artifact of conspiracy theory. Your first step will be to identify an artifact that espouses or embraces a particular conspiracy theory. This could be a video, website, book, podcast, or some other “text.” Next, you will analyze the artifact, using questions such as: • What is the central narrative or story of the artifact? What is the argument? Who appear to be the key players and victims in the conspiracy? Is a specific motive for the conspiracy identified? Does the artifact explain how or why the conspiracy has been kept secret? • What evidence is presented in favor of the conspiracy? Is the evidence credible? Where does it come from? Are experts identified and cited? Can you identify their credentials? Does the artifact cite specific documents, data, or other material to support its claims? Are their gaps in the evidence or missing pieces? Are any counterarguments presented? • How would you describe the rhetorical style of the artifact? What techniques are used to build credibility and persuade the audience? To whom might the artifact appeal and why? Does the artifact adopt the rhetoric of scientific inquiry? Does it adopt a “paranoid” or apocalyptic style? Does it adopt a polarized perspective between good and evil? • What is the underlying theory of power or politics presented in the artifact? Are there aspects of this theory that are logical or accurate? How might we situate this conspiracy theory within past or present political and social conflicts/tensions? What role does human agency play in the conspiracy? Is a specific course of action recommended? • Does the artifact draw on other conspiracy theories (true, false, or unknown)? Can you identify any related conspiracy theories, whether the artifact mentions them or not? How does the artifact fit in with other conspiracy theories you’re familiar with? • What evidence is available to refute or disprove the conspiracy theory? What aspects of the conspiracy theory are illogical or unsupported? • Overall, how does the artifact demonstrate the hallmarks or key characteristics of conspiracy theory, based on our readings and class discussion? What specific examples from our readings can you point to that would help us understand or contextualize the artifact? The outcome of your analysis will be two products: 1. An essay of 3-4 pages (double-spaced) that offers a thorough analysis of the conspiracy theory artifact, based on the questions above. While you do not need to answer every question, you must incorporate specific examples from the artifact and from our class readings to support your argument. If you use outside sources, you should also include a bibliography. If you only cite authors we have read, the author’s name will be sufficient. 2. A multimedia presentation of 1-2 minutes that refutes the conspiracy theory and/or identifies flaws in its reasoning or evidence. The presentation should make a coherent argument, and it must include both audio and visual elements. You can draw on preexisting material (images, videos, etc.) to build your argument, but you may not use substantial portions of preexisting material to fill time. A good rule of thumb is that no one preexisting source should take up more than 10 seconds of time. While both the audio and visual portions of the presentation will be important, the coherence of your argument and evidence will be the largest part of your grade. This presentation can be made as a video, a self-advancing powerpoint, or other similar type of software that you feel comfortable with. Please have your artifact selected and approved by me at least 1 week before the assignment is due. If you have questions about your artifact, please email me. Grading Criteria This assignment will be graded according to these criteria: • Completeness and Clarity: The essay and video attend carefully to all aspects of the assignment. The essay is well-organized and free of grammatical and mechanical errors that interfere with a reader’s ability to understand the analysis. The video is easy to follow, featuring reasonably smooth transitions and editing. • Analysis and Evidence: The essay presents a coherent and thorough analysis of the conspiracy theory artifact, using appropriate and specific examples. The essay incorporates relevant ideas and concepts from class readings in a logical manner, demonstrating a clear understanding of those ideas and concepts. The video presents a coherent and concise argument, using carefully selected examples. • Aesthetics and Style: The video demonstrates attention to craft in its incorporation of audio and visual elements. The video is visually compelling and scripted in a thoughtful and engaging style. Completeness/Clarity Criteria Possible Both an essay and a video are submitted 10 Score Analysis & Evidence Multimedia shows attention to detail, at least minimal amount of editing 10 Grammar/spelling/readability 20 Essay provides a coherent and thorough analysis of the artifact 25 Essay incorporates relevant ideas 25 and concepts from at least 2 class readings and demonstrates an understanding of those concepts. Aesthetics and Style Multimedia follows logical train of thought. 25 Multimedia has both audio and visual elements. 10 Multimedia script is engaging and 10 interesting. It is evident some thought has 5 been given to visual components. Multimedia uses no more than 10 10 seconds from any one source Total /150 Article Conspiracy Theory: Truth Claim or Language Game? Theory, Culture & Society 2017, Vol. 34(1) 137–159 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0263276416657880 tcs.sagepub.com Ole Bjerg and Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen Copenhagen Business School Abstract The paper is a contribution to current debates about conspiracy theories within philosophy and cultural studies. Wittgenstein’s understanding of language is invoked to analyse the epistemological effects of designating particular questions and explanations as a ‘conspiracy theory’. It is demonstrated how such a designation relegates these questions and explanations beyond the realm of meaningful discourse. In addition, Agamben’s concept of sovereignty is applied to explore the political effects of using the concept of conspiracy theory. The exceptional epistemological status assigned to alleged conspiracy theories within our prevalent paradigms of knowledge and truth is compared to the exceptional legal status assigned to individuals accused of terrorism under the War on Terror. The paper concludes by discussing the relation between conspiracy theory and ‘the paranoid style’ in contemporary politics. Keywords Agamben, contemporary politics, epistemology, state of emergency, terrorism, Wittgenstein Introduction What has become of critique when a book that claims that no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon can be a bestseller? (Latour, 2004: 228) The relation between the official versions and divergent versions of a certain number of affairs constitutes a central question for liberal democracies. (Boltanski, 2014: 211) Within a few hours after the January 2015 attack on the editorial office of the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, alternative media sites Corresponding author: Ole Bjerg. Email: ob.mpp@cbs.dk Extra material: http://theoryculturesociety.org/ 138 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) were posting articles, videos and analyses contradicting the mainstream account of the shootings as an act of terrorism. In turn, these media sites suggested that the events in Paris were a case of ‘false flag attacks’ orchestrated in clandestine by American, French and/or Israeli intelligence services. Similar patterns of reporting could be observed during subsequent attacks in Copenhagen in February 2015, Paris in November 2015, and Brussels in March 2016. Parallel to the coverage in the established media, alternative commentators, bloggers and YouTubers would be putting forward observations and speculations to support wholly different interpretations implicating governments and state agencies in the events. The phenomenon of such alternative reporting on contemporary political events seems to signify a significant trait of our current Zeitgeist, namely, the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories. The immediate fascination power of conspiracy theories is that they invoke the same kind of ‘whodunnit’ questions that are found in crime fiction and spy novels and incite us to imagine an alternative reality, which is more spectacular, more intriguing, but also more horrifying than the one that we are familiar with. As suggested, however, by the above quotes from Latour and Boltanski, conspiracy theories also call for reflections of a more philosophical and political nature. Regardless of the credibility of particular conspiracy theories, they are a significant political and cultural phenomenon and they deserve intellectual scrutiny concerning their origins, rationality and practical effects. This is what the current article aims to provide. Such scrutiny should include not only conspiracy theories themselves but also the operations by which the distinction between conspiracy theories and non-conspiracy theories are drawn in mainstream politics, media and academic debates. ‘Conspiracy theory’ is no trivial word. As we are going to see, any use of the concept of conspiracy theory always already implies a demarcation between legitimate, rational knowledge and illegitimate, irrational non-sense. Furthermore, the concept not only refers to a given type of proposition but it also invariably calls into question the sanity and credibility of the person making or asserting the proposition, the conspiracy theorist. In this article, we explore the intricate relation between epistemology and politics in the definition and use of the concept of conspiracy theory. Using Wittgenstein’s early and late theories of language, we first demonstrate how the concept oscillates between a seemingly neutral categorization of particular types of theories and a powerful tool to exclude, discard and suppress these very same types of theories. Secondly, we apply Agamben’s theory of sovereignty in order to locate conspiracy theorizing within a contemporary paradigm of politics signified by the institution of the state of exception. Exploring conspiracy theories Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 139 through these lenses also allows for a critical view of the way in which official authorities currently deal with conspiracy theories and popular suspicion. Paradoxically and counterproductively, governments seemingly begin to act like conspiratorial entities in order to pre-empt supposed conspiracy theories. A more elaborate outline of the argument is provided at the end of the following review of existing research literature on conspiracy theory. Existing Research Literature on Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy theories flourish in gossip, at special conventions, and on blogs, web forums and other outlets on the internet. Beyond the descriptive approaches that try to take stock of the heterogeneous body of outlets and theories (for overviews see, e.g., Knight, 2003; Greig, 2006; Hegstad, 2014), the existing academic research literature may be roughly divided into three major categories, each characterized by a specific approach to conspiracy theories. The first category of academic research is constituted by studies that analyse conspiracy theories as expressions of some kind of psychological, social, or even political pathology. The classic reference for this approach is provided by Hofstadter’s seminal article on ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ (1964). The paranoid style of thinking ‘evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy’ (1964: 3). While distancing himself from the clinical use of the concept of pathology, Hofstadter views conspiracy theories as the symptom of a pervasive pathological trend in the political life of his time. Recent studies continuing along Hofstadter’s line of thinking include the works of Robins and Post (1997), Pipes (1998), or Lewandowsky et al. (2013). Given their interest in pathology, these studies are less concerned with conspiracy theories as such and more concerned with the people who believe and construct these theories, the conspiracy theorists. As recently argued by Dentith (2014), the focus on pathology implies an often problematic and reductive approach to the very belief in conspiracy theories (also see the critique by Gray, 2010: 21–4 and Pigden, 1995). Although the studies of conspiracy theories as symptoms of pathology are not explicitly concerned with the truth value of the factual claims proposed in conspiracy theories, their view that conspiracy thinking is emotionally motivated tends to implicitly rule out even the mere possibility that some people may believe in conspiracy theories based on an evaluation of evidence. The second category of academic research is constituted by studies that approach conspiracy theories as expressions of contemporary culture on par with art or literature. In contrast to the approach inspired by Hofstadter, this category of research literature tends to have a more 140 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) hermeneutic and less dismissive approach to conspiracy theories: some conspiracy theories may be factually wrong, while others contain some or many elements of truth, but in any case they should be viewed as meaningful responses to the experience of certain political, social and cultural conditions rather than simply dismissed as pathological. In this category of literature we find the works of Dean (1998), Melley (1999), Knight (2001), Fenster (2008), Uscinski et al. (2011) and Boltanski (2014), as well as the studies compiled by West and Sanders (2003). Authors engaged in these kinds of political or cultural studies differ in terms of whether conspiracy theorizing should be seen as a potent form of political resistance (Fiske, 1993), a way of disclosing ‘state crimes against democracy’ (deHaven Smith, 2013) or instead a disempowering diversion from true critique (Jameson, 1988; Latour, 2004; Showalter, 2013). Within the third category of academic research, we find philosophical studies that analyse the epistemology of conspiracy theories. There seem to be two interrelated questions within this category of research literature. The first concerns the proper definition of a conspiracy theory. The second concerns the rationality of conspiracy theories. While there is little disagreement on the first question, authors participating in the discussion can be ordered on a spectrum with regard to their position on the second question. At one end of the spectrum we find authors such as Sunstein and Vermeule that tend to dismiss conspiracy theories as not only irrational and false but even dangerous and so not worthy of the attention of rational intellectuals (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009; Sunstein, 2014). At the other end of the spectrum, we find authors such as Coady (2003, 2007), Pigden (1995, 2006, 2007) and Anton et al. (2014) who argue that even if many conspiracy theories are indeed irrational and outrageous, we should never discard a theory without proper examination, purely on the basis that it has been labelled as a ‘conspiracy theory’. Using Pigden’s (1995: 3) concise phrase, ‘the belief that it is superstitious to posit conspiracies is itself a superstition’. In the context of the current journal, the issue of conspiracy theories has most significantly come up in the special issue on ‘Secrecy and Transparency’ (Birchall, 2011a). Birchall (2011b) and Horn (2011) both identify and criticize the contemporary tendency to categorically equate secrecy with illegitimacy and criminality while praising transparency as an ultimate good. The present article works further in the direction of these approaches (Birchall, 2011b; Horn, 2011). In line with their shared call for a more balanced and pragmatic approach to secrecy and transparency, we need an equally pragmatic approach to conspiracy theories. The argument of the current paper may be outlined through specifying its contribution and position in relation to the three strands of existing research literature. The paper begins with a clarification and analysis of the epistemology of conspiracy theories. In this analysis, we side with Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 141 philosophers from the third category of academic research such as Pigden (1995, 2007) and Coady (2003, 2007), arguing that conspiracy theorizing cannot and should not be dismissed as outright irrationality. The examination of the epistemology of conspiracy theories is structured by concepts from the early as well as the late Wittgenstein’s writings on the nature and practical use of language (1922, 1953). The well-known antagonism between the early and late Wittgenstein yields a tension within his authorship as a whole (for discussion of continuities and discontinuities see e.g. Diamond, 1991; Crary and Read, 2000; Hacker, 2000; Medina, 2002). Yet, it is exactly this tension that makes Wittgenstein’s philosophy uniquely applicable in displaying a complex duality pertaining to the epistemology of conspiracy theories. The early Wittgenstein (1922) presents a vision of language as exclusively concerned with the assertion and denial of empirical fact. In Russell’s (1922) apt phrase, language is in ‘the business of asserting and denying facts’. This strict epistemological conception of language is capable of clearly articulating the demand that conspiracy theories should be tested against the facts (Pigden, 1995; Coady, 2007). The later Wittgenstein, by contrast, turned his attention away from the representational content of language to its actual usage (Wittgenstein, 1953: §43). The later Wittgenstein thus pinpoints that concepts are not mere representational devices but rather tools serving various and highly diverse practical, pragmatic and rhetorical functions. Within the context of the present article, this tension between the early and the late Wittgenstein allows us to identify a paradoxical duality in the concept of conspiracy theories: On the one hand, a conspiracy theory seem like a theory to be empirically tested like any other hypothesis, but on the other hand, the actual usages of the concept of a ‘conspiracy theory’ often carry the implication that even its possible truth is excluded. In its actual employment, the concept is implicated with a rhetoric of exclusion (Husting and Orr, 2007). This epistemological clarification is then mobilized in a political analysis along the lines of the studies in the second category of literature. But rather than focusing on conspiracy theories as such, we direct our attention toward the political reactions to the espousal of such theories and towards the rhetorical function of labelling of certain claims as conspiracy theories. Our intuition is that it is the nature of these reactions rather than the proliferation of conspiracy thinking as such that constitutes the ‘paranoid style’ in contemporary politics. This intuition brings us into contact with the field of inquiry opened by the first category of literature that focuses on pathology. But rather than exploring the possible paranoia and irrationality of conspiracy theorists, we analyse how contemporary designations of certain questions and explanations are at odds with the ordinary constitution of a democratic public sphere as committed to public debate and open rational inquiry. 142 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) From this perspective, the real pathology emerges on the side of the mainstream reactions to so-called conspiracy theorists. It does not come in the form of individual pathology in the clinical sense but rather in the form of an epistemic state of exception, which threatens to undermine the functioning of public debate and intellectual critique. The political dimension of the argument is informed by Agamben’s writings on sovereignty and the state of exception (1998, 2005, 2014). As Agamben has argued, these concepts carry a broad diagnostic potential in today’s societies. In this context, they allow one to detect significant similarities that would otherwise ‘elude our gaze’ (Agamben, 2009: 31). Conspiracy + Theory _ Conspiracy Theory The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with the possibilities of the existence and non-existence of the atomic facts. (Wittgenstein, 1922: §4.2) [T]he meaning of a word is its use in the language. (Wittgenstein, 1953: §43) The typical way of beginning a philosophical analysis of conspiracy theories is by posing the question: what is a conspiracy theory? There are, however, two very different ways of answering this seemingly straightforward question. The first is to formulate a logically consistent definition of the concept of conspiracy theory. The second is to investigate what we actually mean when we use the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ in a sentence. The two quotes above come from the major works of the early and the late Wittgenstein respectively. The difference in the conception of language between the two quotes corresponds to the two ways of answering: what is a conspiracy theory? As we are going to see, there is a huge gap between these two levels of meaning. This gap is what makes conspiracy theories interesting not merely from a logical but also from a political point of view. Let us begin with the logical definition. In the early Wittgenstein, we find a conception of language as the expression of a ‘logical picture of the facts’ (Wittgenstein, 1922: §3). Language is, if properly analysed, revealed to be essentially in the business of asserting and denying facts. On this conception of language and conceptual analysis, the task of philosophy is simply to perform logical analyses of propositions so as to clarify their meaning in terms of their factual claims about empirical reality (§6.53). Logically analysing propositions and complex concepts is, according to this influential philosophical method, a matter of breaking them into their constituent parts. Understanding them is ‘understanding their constituent parts’ (§4.024). Somewhat simplified, a logical analysis of the concept of conspiracy theory would thus utilize a compositional strategy by separating it into Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 143 its constituent parts: conspiracy theory ¼ conspiracy + theory. Now one can proceed by defining each of these two components separately. Rather than going about this exercise ourselves, let us look at some of the existing definitions that seem to have used exactly this procedure: [A conspiracy theory is] a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2014) A conspiracy theory is a proposed explanation of some historical event (or events) in terms of the significant causal agency of a relatively small group of persons – the conspirators – acting in secret. (Keeley, 1999: 116) [A] conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it is an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who attempt to conceal their role (at least until their aims are accomplished). (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 205) The first of these is a simple dictionary definition and the two others stem from the academic literature. While there are indeed small variations between the three definitions, they do not differ substantially from each other. ‘Theory’ is defined in terms of ‘explanation’ of an ‘event’. ‘Conspiracy’ is defined in terms of ‘people’, ‘powerful’, ‘secret’, and some form of intentionality. The full definition is completed as the two analysed sub-definitions are synthesized. Even though this kind of definition of ‘conspiracy theory’ is logically consistent with the definitions of its constituent components ‘conspiracy’ and ‘theory’, it falls short in a number of ways, when we look at the meaning of the word in terms of ‘its use in the language’. Crucially, the definition seems too broad in terms of its empirical extension as it captures a range of theories that we would clearly hesitate to call ‘conspiracy theories’ in any meaningful sense of the word (Pigden, 1995, 2006). For instance, much of what goes on in the board rooms of corporations with respect to management, strategy, marketing, finance, mergers and acquisitions, etc., is logically consistent with the above notions of a conspiracy and much of what goes on at business schools that theorize about the management of corporations would thus be called conspiracy theories. Furthermore, it also seems to be the case that the way we normally use the term conspiracy theory excludes instances where the theory has been generally accepted as true. The Watergate scandal serves as the standard reference (e.g. Buenting and Taylor, 2010). A similar and more contemporary illustration of the same point is found by looking back at Keeley’s 144 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) (1999) listing of six conspiracy theories with the hindsight provided by Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures of NSA monitoring practices. Listed along with theories such as ‘the HIV virus . . . was the product of American and Soviet biological warfare research’ or ‘extra-terrestrials regularly visit our planet’, Keeley also includes the theory that ‘[a]ll transatlantic communications are monitored and recorded by the U.S. National Security Agency’ (Keeley, 1999: 110). Just as the Watergate scandal is now part of the official account of the Nixon administration, the NSA monitoring practices are arguably also part of our present understanding of the way that US intelligence works and neither thus qualify as ‘conspiracy theories’ anymore. The point here is that when we employ the term ‘conspiracy theory’ in actual language use, we are implicitly assuming and implying that the claims advanced by the theory are not true. As Husting and Orr (2007) have argued, actual employments of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ are often implicated with a ‘rhetoric of exclusion’. Conspiracy theories are excluded from being even possible candidates for truth. This is also why we sometimes, in ordinary discourse, use the phrase: ‘It is just a conspiracy theory’. The word ‘just’, linguistically, functions as a pragmatic modifier, which indicates that we take for granted that the theory is obviously not true. Conversely, speakers proposing views that might be interpreted as conspiratorial must ward off this implicit assumption of obvious falsity by using various forms of disclaimers of the type: ‘I am not a conspiracy theorist, but . . .’. In summary, if we subject the concept of conspiracy theory to a strictly logical conception of language and define it simply as the addition of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘theory’, we overlook all of the implicit connotations inherent in its meaning as conceived by the late Wittgenstein’s theory of language in use. Even if some attempts at strict logical definition do indeed capture some of these connotations by adding the proviso that conspiracy theories must be controversial from the standpoint of ‘official explanations’ (Coady, 2003: 199; also cf. Clarke, 2007; Anton, 2014), they still do not capture the often present pragmatic implication that ‘conspiracy theories’, unlike any other sort of theory or hypothesis, are not even worth empirical inquiry. We will illustrate and apply this point in the next section. Tractatus Ideologico-Philosophicus In the early Wittgenstein, we find two crucial distinctions. On the one hand, he distinguishes between true and false propositions. True propositions are factual claims that correspond with empirical reality (1922: §4.06-4.063). This is a pretty straightforward concept of truth. On the other hand, the early Wittgenstein also distinguishes between propositions that make sense (Sinn) and nonsensical (unsinnig) propositions. Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 145 According to Wittgenstein, propositions make sense in so far as they contain factual claims about reality (§4.022). If the claim corresponds with reality, the proposition is true. If the claim does not correspond with reality, the proposition is false. The obvious implication is that even false propositions can be sensical. ‘The Earth revolves around the Moon’ would be an example of a false but sensical proposition. At least on the classic interpretation of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein hereby relegates most of the propositions of philosophy to the domain of nonsense by insisting that all significant propositions must represent empirical reality, which, in his rather unconventional view, involves being truth-functions of lower-level elementary propositions describing very simple aspects of reality (Anscombe, 1959; Hacker, 2000). He argues that most philosophers do not understand this hidden logic of language and do not respect its limitations. Decisively, this means that most of the questions posed by philosophy are pseudo-problems, since their answers cannot be tested against empirical reality. The task of philosophy, which Wittgenstein (1922: §6.53) takes upon himself, is thus merely to clarify the nonsensical status of these problems by showing how they emerge only as the result of misguided use of language. Returning from these general considerations about the nature of language back to the specific topic of this paper, we can demonstrate how the political function of the concept of conspiracy theory is performed through a ‘short circuit’ of the two conceptions of language that we find in the early and the late Wittgenstein respectively. What is inconsistently combined in this ‘short circuit’ is the seeming adherence to open rational empirical inquiry combined with a simultaneous rhetoric of exclusion deeming empirical examination superfluous if not inappropriate. Let us take a contemporary and controversial example to illustrate the point: On 22 July 2014, the Guardian published an article about the crash of Malaysian Airline MH17 over Ukraine five days earlier. The title of the article reads: ‘MH17: Five of the most bizarre conspiracy theories. From Zionist plots to the Illuminati, some wildly imaginative alternatives are being promoted by the likes of Russian TV’ (Reidy, 2014). The article begins by making a distinction between two different types of accounts of the tragic event as it asks: ‘Was this a cock-up or a conspiracy?’ In the category of ‘cock-up’ theories we find one version of the event: Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists gained access to a sophisticated Buk ground-to-air missile system, most likely via Russian channels. They were keen to shoot down Ukrainian planes. Unfortunately, they did not have the equipment or expertise to differentiate between civilian and military aircraft, and the result was the horrific death of MH17’s 298 innocent passengers. (Reidy, 2014) 146 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) The article now proceeds by listing five ‘alternative’ versions, all falling into the category of conspiracy theories: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The Ukrainians did it It was the Ukrainians, attempting to shoot down Vladimir Putin MH17 was shot down to conceal the truth about HIV/Aids It was Israel The ‘Illuminati’ did it. (Reidy, 2014) At the time of writing the current paper, the truth about the crash has not yet been established, but this is not the decisive issue in our context. In fact, this leaves us in a better position to make an analysis of the way the concept of conspiracy theory works both logically and politically. As the Guardian article makes its first distinction between ‘cock-up’ and ‘conspiracy’, it performs an operation that is effectively similar to the early Wittgenstein’s dismissal of non-factual claims as nonsensical. The article does not present six different versions of the events that we would then have to examine on an equal footing in order to determine which one corresponds to empirical reality. In turn, the designation of five of the versions as conspiracy theories immediately relegates them beyond the sphere of rational examination. Since they do not a priori make sense, there is no point in even investigating whether they are true. This leaves us with only the cock-up theory, which we do not even have to examine either, as it is the only logical explanation that is left. The main critical question is, of course, if the article follows the strict method of logical analysis prescribed by early Wittgenstein, as it makes the distinction between the cock-up theory, that makes sense, and the conspiracy theories that are nonsensical. It would not seem so. While the primary target of the early Wittgenstein’s critique was fellow philosophers, who had entangled themselves in metaphysical speculations, it soon emerges that the target of the Guardian article is rather fellow media organizations such as ‘the likes of Press TV and Russia’s RT, both government-run channels for serious international players’ (Reidy, 2014). We see here how the initial analytical distinction between cock-up and conspiracy is grafted on to a politically loaded distinction between the enlightened free Western press and the state governed Eastern press. The article concludes on a high note, which perfectly illustrates the level of the political stakes in the demarcation between critical journalism and irrational conspiracy thinking: It is no good to say they are merely ‘alternative’ ways of looking at the world, as some of their defenders will counter. There is reality and there is fantasy. We cannot engage with the world, or hope to improve it, without first knowing the true state of things. Conspiracy theories destroy any hope of that. (Reidy, 2014) Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 147 The concept of conspiracy theory is no trivial word in such instances of public discourse. It carries powerful political implications as it functions to relegate certain questions beyond the sphere of critical scrutiny. While it is relatively clear what makes sense and what does not – and certainly it is a senseful proposition that non-separatist Ukrainians could have shot down MH17 – are we not sometimes willing to dismiss a perfectly sensible hypothesis as nonsensical ‘conspiracy theory’ simply in virtue of the fact that it represents a version of historical events that contradicts the hegemonic power constellation? While this use of ‘conspiracy theory’ as implicated with a rhetoric of exclusion is neatly captured by the later Wittgenstein’s stress on the many purposes of conceptual usage, there is arguably still room for caution here. Even if, as the late Wittgenstein (cf. 1953, §23) demonstrates, the early Wittgenstein’s prescriptions of the correct use of language are inappropriate for many of the multiple ways that we actually use language, they seem apt advice when we talk about conspiracy theories. We should, as also emphasized by Bale (2007), make sure that when we dismiss certain propositions as nonsensical conspiracy theories, it is because they make claims that are truly beyond any form of factual verification or refutation. Of course, some conspiracy theories might strike us as the attempt of ‘the poor person’s cognitive mapping’ (Jameson, 1988: 357; also cf. Žižek, 2006: 375–6) to grasp a complex phenomenon in the terms of a simple narrative (‘global capitalism’ as the simple result of ‘a Jewish conspiracy’, etc.). Yet, if we follow the rhetoric of exclusion inherent to the use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and dismiss it without further examination, we lose the very criterion of empirical falsification by which it could be legitimately dismissed at all. But even more damaging than this epistemological problem, highlighted by Wittgenstein, such a blanket dismissal entails that we are running the political risk of losing sight of actual conspiracies such as the famous Los Angeles transit system conspiracy leading to conviction in 1949, the Watergate scandal of 1972 or the recent Volkswagen scandal of 2015. In the next sections, we will leave Wittgenstein’s epistemic and linguistic perspective and utilize Agamben to examine the extent to which this political risk of blind exclusion is realized even in the liberal democracies of today. The War on Epistemic Terrorism We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror. (President George W. Bush, UN speech, 10 November 2001) 148 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) The events on 9/11 seem to have created an intimate relation between terrorism and conspiracy theories. This relation plays out on more than one level. There is the immediate fact that 9/11 functioned as a catalyst for the so-called ‘War on Terror’, while at the same time becoming the object of more conspiracy theories than perhaps any other event in recent history. In this section, however, we want to suggest another and perhaps more subtle relation between terrorism and conspiracy theories that may be observed in the aftermath of 9/11. Let us start by looking at terrorism. The USA Patriot Act issued by the US Senate in October 2001 arguably constitutes the emblematic instance for our time of the legalization of exceptional measures justified by the imminent threat of terror. These measures are, however, not unique to the US context, and we have seen similar legal procedures instituted in France following the November 2015 attacks. Given its emblematic character and the subsequent proliferation of similar measures, Agamben (2005: 3, 22) argues that the Patriot Act requires us to revitalize the concept of the ‘state of exception’ derived from Carl Schmitt’s (2004 [1922]) early 20th century legal theory. For Agamben, this figure from Western legal history carries a philosophical or a diagnostic message for today’s societies (cf. Durantaye, 2014). As underlined in Agamben’s more recent diagnoses of the current state of Western democracies (2011) and its civil liberties (2013), the Patriot Act, as well as a number of other contemporary legal measures, requires us to rethink the structure of contemporary political discourse and the current paradigm of government in terms of a ‘state of exception’ that is proliferating beyond strictly juridical domains. It is this analytical extension of Schmitt’s concept that the next sections of our article will apply in the analysis of the political function of conspiracy theories. Agamben describes the paradigmatic shift in politics and the exercise of sovereignty instituted in the aftermath of 9/11 in the following way: [M]odern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system. . . . the state of exception tends increasingly to appear as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics. (Agamben, 2005: 2) At the heart of modern democracies we find the separation into the three branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial. However, the institution of a state of emergency as a permanent order, that Agamben addresses, blurs the boundaries between these three branches, and it tends to subsume both legislative and judicial power under the executive branch of government. In November 2001, then President Bush issued a military order on the Detention, Treatment, Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 149 and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. A key implication of the order was that so-called ‘enemy combatants’ captured in the War on Terror would be tried before ‘military tribunals’, thus exempting them from the basic legal rights they would have otherwise enjoyed as POWs under the Geneva Convention or as suspects under US Criminal Law. This military order exemplifies the way that the executive branch assumes the power to make legal decisions excluding persons from the normal procedures of the legislative and judicial system. In relation to our specific context, one could here suggest a striking similarity or homology between the concept of terrorism and that of a conspiracy theory. Terrorism seems to relate to our current paradigm of government and sovereignty as conspiracy theories relate to our current paradigm of knowledge and truth. We thus suggest that conspiracy theories are conceived as a kind of ‘epistemic terrorism’. Let us elaborate on this suggestion by charting the structural similarities between terrorism and conspiracy theory. When someone is suspected of having committed a simple crime such as robbing a bank, the legal system normally performs two distinct operations. First, the person is accused of being a robber. Second, the person is convicted as being a robber. The purpose of this distinction is of course to allow for the legal system to correct itself in case the accusation turns out to have been wrong and the person is actually innocent. But in the case of terrorism, the distinction between accusation and conviction seems to collapse. It is as if the mere accusation is at the same time already a conviction. Terrorism is not merely a simple crime. It is an offence so serious that it transcends the question of guilt. A terrorist is, as it were, so evil that we cannot even determine his guilt in a court of law. In turn, he is simply detained indefinitely. A similar logic applies to conspiracy theories. As soon as a certain possible explanation for an event is designated as a conspiracy theory, it is implicitly assumed that the explanation obviously cannot be taken seriously. It is thus futile to investigate the truth value of the claim, since this would imply that one was taking it seriously. Anton (2014: 159) observes how the established media institutions responded to alternative explanations of the events on 9/11 by immediately dismissing these as ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘lies’ without addressing the actual argument of such explanations. In similar fashion as the guilt of suspected terrorists under Bush’s 2001 military order is to be determined in special military tribunals, so are the factual circumstances of controversial historical events sometimes determined in special commissions such as the Warren Commission or the 9/11 Commission. Just as the purpose of military tribunals is to produce some form of quasi-legality in the treatment of terrorists, part of the purpose of these commissions is to produce the official version of an event that is subsequently meant to be recorded in the history books. 150 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) The point here is of course not that most conspiracy theories are true or that the individuals detained at Guantanamo Bay are somehow all innocent. The point here is merely to show how the procedures by which the truth value of claims designated as conspiracy theories is determined differ from the procedures by which the truth value of ‘ordinary’ claims is determined – just as the legal procedures determining the guilt of terrorists are exceptional in differing from ordinary legal procedures. In summary, what makes it tempting to argue that conspiracy theories are treated as a kind of ‘epistemic terrorism’ is a shared form of exceptionalism. What is invoked by the concept of conspiracy theory is thus arguably a ‘state of epistemic exception’. This is the proposal, which we will seek to contextualize and substantiate in the next section by analysing Sunstein and Vermule’s (2009) seminal article on conspiracy theories as an exemplar of such a tendency towards a state of epistemic exception. The State of Epistemic Exception In recent years, yet another relation between terrorism and conspiracy theory seems to have emerged. Not only did the events on 9/11 give rise to both the War on Terror as well as a hitherto unseen proliferation of conspiracy theories about the circumstances of the event. And not only does the accusation of someone as a terrorist and the designation of someone as a conspiracy theorist put into motion homologous operations within the field of law and knowledge respectively. Allegedly, conspiracy theories may also serve to inspire and support the dangerous ideologies which ultimately motivate people to become terrorists. An illustrative example of this relation can be found in the academic literature on conspiracy theories. Under the headline Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures, Sunstein and Vermeule put conspiracy theories on par with an epidemic disease that calls for immediate government action. The paper is interesting as it exemplifies a number of ways in which a proper Wittgensteinian logic is suspended when it comes to the investigation of conspiracy theories. In their initial definition, the authors perform the seemingly innocent procedure of limiting their scope of analysis: We begin by narrowing our focus to conspiracy theories that are false, harmful, and unjustified (in the epistemological sense) . . . Our focus throughout is on demonstrably false conspiracy theories, such as the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, not ones that are true or whose truth is undetermined. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials might undermine such theories. (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 204) Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 151 What happens here is a confusion of the distinction between sensical/ nonsensical propositions, on the one hand, and the distinction between true/false propositions, on the other hand. While the first distinction can be made a priori, the second distinction can only be made a posteriori, that is, through comparison with empirical reality. Sunstein and Vermeule, however, take for granted that they have a superior capacity to distinguish between true and false conspiracy theories purely on the basis of logical reasoning. This philosophical and (ideo)logical move allows them to proceed with the main aim of their paper, namely to provide policy recommendations and arguments as to why governments should counter the proliferation of conspiracy theories through extraordinary measures. Throughout this argument the authors manage to get themselves entangled in a number of curious self-contradictions. On the one hand, they make several references to Popper (1945) and his idea of the open society. The institutions of the open society provide the best bulwark not only against the proliferation of ‘false, harmful, and unjustified’ conspiracy theories but even against the emergence of conspiracies themselves: The first-line response to conspiracy theories is to maintain an open society, in which those who might be tempted to subscribe to such theories are unlikely to distrust all knowledge-creating institutions, and are exposed to evidence and corrections. (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 218) On the other hand, Sunstein and Vermeule proceed to recommend a number of government measures which are hardly compatible with the idea of ‘an open society with a well-functioning marketplace of ideas and free flow of information’. The very notion that the countering of conspiracy theories is a matter of government concern and action rather than simply a task to be carried out by the normal functioning of the press, the universities, or other institutions of the open society is itself a very undemocratic idea. Agamben shows how the state of exception is always justified as a necessary measure against extraordinary forces threatening the very constitution of society. ‘[N]ecessity acts . . . to justify a single, specific case of transgression by means of an exception’ (Agamben, 2005: 24). In order to save society, no sacrifice is too great, which ultimately leads to the paradox: ‘No sacrifice is too great for our democracy, least of all the temporary sacrifice of democracy itself’ (Walter Benjamin quoted in Agamben, 2005: 9). Along such lines, Sunstein and Vermeule argue how conspiracy theories constitute a special type of knowledge, which cannot therefore be dealt with through normal deliberative procedures: The basic problem with pitching governmental responses to the suppliers of conspiracy theories is that, as we have noted, those 152 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) theories have a self-sealing quality. They are (1) resistant and in extreme cases invulnerable to contrary evidence, and (2) especially resistant to contrary evidence offered by the government, because the government rebuttal is folded into the conspiracy theory itself. (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 223) The special quality of conspiracy theories calls for extraordinary measures. Democracy must be sacrificed in order to save democracy. The specific recommendations of the paper illustrate this very clearly. This first one constitutes a curious contradiction in terms itself: ‘Government can partially circumvent these problems [of debunking conspiracy theories] if it enlists credible independent experts in the effort to rebut the theories’ (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 223). It remains unsaid how experts can be ‘independent’ while at the same time being enlisted by the government. The task of such government enlisted yet independent experts is to engage in ‘cognitive infiltration and persuasion’, which includes, for instance, the following measure: [W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 219) To some readers, this may sound like something out of an old STASI manual but the authors fortunately provide the following consolation: Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009: 219) Of course the question on whether ‘social welfare is improved’ or not by the combating of particular conspiracy theories depends on a decision that lies solely with the sovereign government. We see here an example of the way that the suspension of democratic norms is performed through a decision which does not rest on any norm itself. In turn, it rests on the definition of the perfectly empty concept of ‘social welfare’. It is an eminently sovereign decision. Sunstein and Vermeule’s paper creates a peculiar paradox. On the one hand, their argument largely rests on the assumption that we can count Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 153 on most conspiracy theories, or at least theories about conspiracies in the open societies of the Western world, being false. Due to the checks and balances instituted in the open society, it is almost impossible for conspiracies to get away with their devious plans. On the other hand, the recommendations offered by the paper are in fact that the government should do precisely what conspiracy theorists are claiming that it is already doing. The government should enlist agents (and their allies?) to secretly manipulate the flow of information and exchange of ideas in real and virtual communities by planting doubt and stylized facts. The government can no longer trust the judgment of the people and hence it should conspire to manipulate them into believing what the government has already determined to be the truth. Concluding Discussion: Paranoid Style in Contemporary Politics The relation between the official versions and divergent versions of a certain number of affairs constitutes a central question for liberal democracies. . . . [S]peech entails an invitation to believe. Freedom of speech thus goes hand-in-hand with freedom of belief. These two freedoms are based on the foundational liberal ideas of common reason, which, deployed in a deliberative framework, must allow a choice between harmful and/or implausible opinion and useful and/ or plausible explanations to be made almost mechanically. But what is to be done when people in increasingly large numbers believe in things deemed senseless or pernicious by members of an elite that considers itself enlightened? (Boltanski, 2014: 211–12) This passage efficiently captures what is at stake in contemporary struggles over the demarcation between outrageous conspiracy theories and legitimate popular critique. The fact that the question raised by Boltanski is not merely an intellectual problem but also a highly charged political issue is evidenced by the following quote from a 2014 speech by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to the UN: As evidence emerges about the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by preachers who claim not to encourage violence, but whose world view can be used as a justification for it. We know this world view. The peddling of lies: that 9/11 was a Jewish plot or that the 7/7 London attacks were staged. The idea that Muslims are persecuted all over the world as a deliberate act of Western policy. The concept of an inevitable clash of civilisations. We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism – not 154 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) just violent extremism. . . . Of course there are some who will argue that this is not compatible with free speech and intellectual inquiry. But I say: would we sit back and allow right-wing extremists, Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen to recruit on our university campuses? No. (Prime Minister David Cameron, 2014; also see Cameron, 2015) What we find here is a short circuiting of fact and law. One of the defining values of a free and democratic society is the right to pursue new knowledge with an open and critical mind and to express one’s beliefs about the world without having to fear prosecution or other kinds of discrimination. And yet what Cameron seems to be hinting at in this passage is precisely the suspension of such rights. Rather than trusting our established modern institutions such as the free press, the academic communities of scholars at universities, the educational system, or even just the public forum of rational debate with the capacity to weed out false explanations of 9/11 or 7/7 through their normal functioning, he seems to suggest that the government, in one form or another, should take extraordinary measures to ‘deal with’ allegedly extremist forms of knowledge. The short circuiting of fact and law is an inherent feature of the state of exception. As Agamben concludes: If it has been effectively said that in the state of exception fact is converted into law . . . the opposite is also true, that is, that an inverse movement also acts in the state of exception, by which law is suspended and obliterated in fact. (Agamben, 2005: 29) On the one hand, the law is suspended with reference to fact and necessity. Terrorism is a fact that forces us to suspend the laws guaranteeing the public right to free speech. On the other hand, the assertion of certain facts is exempted from consideration or simply ruled out by law. Their expression is prohibited and possibly punished. As we have argued throughout this paper, the use of the concept of conspiracy theory is no innocent operation. It functions not only to dismiss certain ideas and questions as ridiculous or illegitimate, but also and increasingly to mark them as dangerous and possibly unlawful. Whatever one may think of the explanations that people come up with to answer specific questions, the right to pose questions and reflect upon them is one of the defining characteristics of an open and democratic society. Clarke (2007) and Anton (2014) both note how there is a curious symmetry between the ‘official’ (Al-Qaeda did it) and the ‘alternative’ (9/11 was an inside job) explanations for the events of 9/11. Even if only the latter qualifies as a conspiracy theory, according to the criteria discussed earlier, both of them make recourse to the existence of a malicious Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 155 conspiracy, which has planned and executed the attacks. With Hofstadter we may push this homology one step further. Speaking of the ‘vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoiac’ he says: [A]lthough they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy, he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation. (Hofstadter, 1964: 4) As we read this passage today, it seems equally fitting as a diagnosis of a full-blown conspiracy theorist and as a diagnosis of the stance adopted by contemporary heads of state. Instead of opposites, both figures appear as ‘overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic’ expressions of the same overarching ‘paranoid style in contemporary politics’. The difference is of course that the former typically operates on exotic websites at the margins of public discourse while the latter has unlimited access to major media outlets and executive power to suspend civil liberties. With Agamben we can think of the former as an epistemic homo sacer, who finds himself banned from the sphere of public reason and discourse. Paraphrasing Agamben’s definition of homo sacer as someone ‘who may be killed but not sacrificed’ (Agamben, 1998: 8), the designation of someone as a conspiracy theorist implies that his or her theories ‘may be immediately discarded but not falsified by means of the standard rituals of scientific testing’. Epistemic sovereignty, in this sense, implies the power to decide which theories and theorists should be exempted from universal liberties of scientific scrutiny and censored from public debate. What if the ideas, questions, and explanations circulating in the field of so-called conspiracy theories are crude expressions of a vital popular curiosity and scepticism, which is the lifeblood of an organic democratic society? What if the fact that ‘people in increasingly large numbers believe in things deemed senseless or pernicious by members of an elite that considers itself enlightened’ (Boltanski, 2014: 212) is a symptom that university scholars and other official experts are no longer capable of 156 Theory, Culture & Society 34(1) explaining the world in ways that make sense to the public? If either of these two propositions is true, we should be much more worried about sovereign decisions to stifle debate and reflection about particular issues than we should about bloggers throwing wild ideas into cyberspace. Unless we wish to contribute to the instantiation of an epistemic state of exception, the role of intellectuals in this situation should still be defined by the classic virtues of the freedom of speech and expression. However, rather than ending on a high note with a quote by someone like Voltaire, who would no doubt be a great defender of the right to exercise even outrageous conspiracy thinking, let’s conclude with an old joke about the rabbi, Rabinovitch, who wants to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The joke is quoted from Žižek, who sometimes uses it to illustrate the logic of Hegelian dialectics: The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him why [he wants to emigrate]; Rabinovitch answers: ‘There are two reasons why. The first is that I’m afraid that in the Soviet Union the Communists will lose power, there will be a counter-revolution and the new power will put all the blame for the Communist crimes on us Jews – there will again be anti-Jewish pogroms . . .’. ‘But’, interrupts the bureaucrat, ‘this is pure nonsense, nothing can change in the Soviet Union, the power of the Communists will last forever!’ ‘Well,’ responds Rabinovitch calmly, ‘that’s my second reason.’ (Žižek, 1989: 175) The Hegelian point is of course that we can only arrive at the second reason when the first has been negated by the bureaucrat. In addition, the joke also provides a funny commentary on totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union. Now let’s imagine a contemporary version of the joke by substituting Rabinovitch with a so-called 9/11 Truther who wants to emigrate from the United States: The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him why he wants to emigrate. The Truther answers: ‘There are two reasons why. The first is that I’m afraid that forces within the US government were behind the attacks on 9/11. As this secret becomes increasingly difficult to contain, their power is threatened and they will institute extraordinary measures to silence skeptical US citizens, which includes sending them to secret FEMA camps.’ ‘But’, interrupts the bureaucrat, ‘this is pure nonsense, no-one in their right mind would ever believe that the government was behind the attacks. Even if it were true, the truth would never threaten the status quo, nor would the government ever feel threatened.’ ‘Well,’ responds the Truther calmly, ‘that’s my second reason.’ Bjerg and Presskorn-Thygesen 157 References Agamben G (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Agamben G (2005) State of Exception. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Agamben G (2009) The Signature of All Things: On Method. New York: Zone Books. Agamben G (2011) Note on the concept of democracy. 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Ole Bjerg is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He is the author of Parallax of Growth – The Philosophy of Ecology and Economy (Polity, 2016), Making Money – The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism (Verso, 2014), Poker – The Parody of Capitalism (Umich Press, 2011), as well as three books in Danish. Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen is a full-time Research Assistant at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. His research focuses on the history and (mis)uses of the concept of normativity in social theory. The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 17, Number 2, 2009, pp. 202–227 Symposium on Conspiracy Theories Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures* Cass R. Sunstein Law, Harvard University and Adrian Vermeule Law, Harvard University T HE truth is out there”:1 conspiracy theories are all around us. In August 2004, a poll by Zogby International showed that 49 percent of New York City residents, with a margin of error of 3.5 percent, believed that officials of the U.S. government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.”2 In a Scripps-Howard Poll in 2006, some 36 percent of respondents assented to the claim that “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center or took no action to stop them.”3 Sixteen percent said that it was either very likely or somewhat likely that “the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.”4 Conspiracy theories can easily be found all over the world. Among sober-minded Canadians, a September 2006 poll found that 22 percent believed that “the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans.”5 In a poll conducted in seven Muslim countries, 78 percent of respondents said that they do not believe the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Arabs.6 The most popular “ *Thanks to Gabriella Blum, Mark Fenster, Don Herzog, Orin Kerr, Eric Posner, Andrei Shleifer, Mark Tushnet, and this journal’s referees for valuable comments, and to Joel Peters-Fransen and Elisabeth Theodore for excellent research assistance. 1 This slogan was popularized by the television show “The X-Files,” 〈http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files〉. 9/11 conspiracy theorists often call themselves the “9/11 Truth Movement”; see 〈http://www.911truth.org〉. 2 Zogby International, “Half of New Yorkers believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9-11 attacks and ‘consciously failed to act,’” 〈http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855〉, posted Aug. 30, 2004. 3 Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III, “A third of U.S. public believes 9/11 conspiracy theory,” Scripps Howard News Service, 〈http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action= detail&pk=CONSPIRACY〉, posted Aug. 2, 2006. 4 Ibid. 5 “One in 5 Canadians sees 9/11 as U.S. plot – poll,” Reuters, Sept. 11, 2006. 6 Matthew A. Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, “Media, education and anti-Americanism in the Muslim world,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (2004), 117–133. © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00325.x CONSPIRACY THEORIES 203 account, in these countries, is that 9/11 was the work of the U.S. or Israeli governments.7 In China, a bestseller attributes various events (the rise of Hitler, the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, and environmental destruction in the developing world) to the Rothschild banking dynasty; the analysis has been read and debated at high levels of business and government, and it appears to have had an effect on discussions about currency policies.8 Throughout American history, race-related violence has often been spurred by false rumors, generally pointing to alleged conspiracies by one or another group.9 What causes such theories to arise and spread? Are they important and perhaps even threatening, or merely trivial and even amusing? What can and should government do about them? We aim here to sketch some psychological and social mechanisms that produce, sustain, and spread these theories; to show that some of them are quite important and should be taken seriously; and to offer suggestions for governmental responses, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of law. Most of the academic literature directly involving conspiracy theories falls into one of two classes: (1) work by analytic philosophers, especially in epistemology and the philosophy of science, that explores a range of issues but mainly asks what counts as a “conspiracy theory” and whether such theories are methodologically suspect;10 (2) a smattering of work in sociology and Freudian psychology on the causes of conspiracy theorizing.11 We offer some remarks on the conceptual debates here, but we will generally proceed in pragmatic fashion and mostly from the ground up, hewing close to real examples and the policy problems they pose. To illuminate issues of policy, we draw upon literatures in social psychology, economics, and other disciplines concerning informational cascades, the spread of rumors, and the epistemology of groups and social networks. We adapt the insights of these literatures by focusing on the features of 7 Ibid. at p. 120. See Richard McGregor, “Chinese buy into conspiracy theory,” Financial Times, Sept. 25, 2007, 〈http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1907〉. 9 See Terry Ann Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots, 2nd edn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). 10 See, e.g., David Coady, ed., Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate (Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2006) and Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici, eds, Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987). 11 There is also a body of work that collects many interesting examples of conspiracy theories, but without any sustained analytic approach. See, e.g.: Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy (New York: Free Press, 1997). For a treatment of conspiracy theories from the standpoint of cultural studies, see Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). A great deal of literature exists on rumors; conspiracy theories can proliferate through rumors, although they need not do so (consider the conspiracy theories introduced through bestselling books, described above). For the classic treatment of rumor, see Gordon Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1947). Valuable recent discussions include: Nicholas Difonzo and Prashant Bordia, Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006); and Chip Heath and Veronique Campion-Vincent, eds, Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend (New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2005). On rumors, conspiracies, and racial violence, see Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots. 8 204 CASS R. SUNSTEIN AND ADRIAN VERMEULE false and harmful conspiracy theories that make them distinct from, and sometimes more damaging than, other false and harmful beliefs. Our running example involves conspiracy theories relating to terrorism, especially theories that arose from and post-date the 9/11 attacks. Terrorism-related theories are hardly the only ones of interest, but they provide a crucial testing ground for the significance, causes, and policy implications of widespread conspiracy theorizing. As we shall see, an understanding of conspiracy theories illuminates the spread of information and beliefs more generally. We shall also see, however, that because of their special characteristics, conspiracy theories pose unique challenges. Section I explores some definitional issues and lays out some of the mechanisms that produce conspiracy theories and theorists. We begin by narrowing our focus to conspiracy theories that are false, harmful, and unjustified (in the epistemological sense), and by discussing different understandings of the nature of such conspiracy theories and different accounts of the kinds of errors made by those who hold them. Our primary claim is that those who hold conspiracy theories of this distinctive sort typically do so not as a result of a mental illness of any kind, or of simple irrationality, but as a result of a “crippled epistemology,” in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources. In that sense, acceptance of such theories may not be irrational or unjustified from the standpoint of those who adhere to them within epistemologically isolated groups or networks,12 although they are unjustified relative to the information available in the wider society, especially if it is an open one. There is a close connection, we suggest, between our claim on this count and the empirical association between terrorist behavior and an absence of civil rights and civil liberties.13 When civil rights and civil liberties are absent, people lack multiple information sources, and they are more likely to have reason to accept conspiracy theories. Section II discusses government responses and legal issues. We address several dilemmas of governmental response to false, harmful, and unjustified conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories turn out to be unusually hard to undermine or dislodge; they have a self-sealing quality, rendering them particularly immune to challenge. Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such. 12 For a valuable and analogous account of fundamentalist beliefs, see Michael Baurmann, “Rational fundamentalism? An explanatory model of fundamentalist beliefs,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 150–66. 13 See Alan Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 75–82. Krueger (p. 148) believes that low civil liberties cause terrorism, but acknowledges that his data are also consistent with the hypothesis that terrorism causes governments to reduce civil liberties. Of course, the two effects may both occur, in a mutually reinforcing pattern. Following Krueger, we assume that low civil liberties tend to produce terrorism, a hypothesis that is supported by the mechanisms we adduce. CONSPIRACY THEORIES 205 I. DEFINITIONS AND MECHANISMS A. DEFINITIONAL NOTES There has been much discussion of what, exactly, counts as a conspiracy theory, and about what, if anything, is wrong with those who hold one. Of course it would be valuable to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for such theories, in a way that would make it possible to make relevant distinctions. However, the various views that people label “conspiracy theories” may well relate to each other through a family-resemblance structure, such that necessary and sufficient conditions cannot be given even in principle. We bracket the most difficult conceptual questions here and suggest, pragmatically, that a conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it is an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who attempt to conceal their role (at least until their aims are accomplished). While many conspiracy theories involve people who are not especially powerful (friends, neighborhoods, fellow employees, family members, and so forth), this account is the most useful for our particular purposes, and it seems to capture the essence of the most prominent and influential conspiracy theories about public affairs. Consider, for example, the view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; that doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus; that the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile; that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud; that the Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy; that Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by federal agents; that the plane crash that killed Democrat Paul Wellstone was engineered by Republican politicians; that the moon landing was staged and never actually occurred; that the Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers are responsible for the deaths of presidents and for economic distress in Asian nations; and that the Great Depression was a result of a plot by wealthy people to reduce the wages of workers.14 14 See Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991) (arguing that it was); Alan Cantwell, AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origins of the AIDS Epidemic (Los Angeles: Aries Rising Press, 1988) (suggesting AIDS was the product of a biowarfare program targeting gay people); Don Phillips, “Missile theory haunts TWA investigation; despite lack of evidence and officials’ denials, some insist friendly fire caused crash,” Washington Post, Mar. 14, 1997, p. A03; “Statement of Sen. Inhofe,” Congressional Record, 149, S10022 (daily ed. July 28, 2003) (“With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is.”); David Mills, “Beware the Trilateral Commission! The influential world panel conspiracy theorists love to hate,” Washington Post, Apr. 25, 1992, p. H1 (describing various conspiracy theories about the Commission); William F. Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (New York: Verso, 2003) (arguing that the military, the CIA, and others within the government conspired to kill King); Kevin Diaz, “Findings don’t slow conspiracy theories on Wellstone crash; an official investigation has focused on pilot error and weather. Some observers still have suggested a political plot,” Star Tribune (Minn.), June 3, 2003, p. A1; Patty Reinert, “Apollo shrugged: hoax theories about moon landings persist,” Houston Chronicle, Nov. 17, 206 CASS R. SUNSTEIN AND ADRIAN VERMEULE Of course some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, and under our definition, they do not cease to be conspiracy theories for that reason.15 The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials (though the plan never went into effect).16 Our focus throughout is on demonstrably false conspiracy theories, such as the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, not ones that are true or whose truth is undetermined. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials might undermine such theories, and as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined.17 Within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus to potentially harmful theories. Consider the false conspiracy theory, held by many of the younger members of our society, that the mysterious “Santa Claus” distributes presents around the world on Christmas Eve. This theory turns out to be false, but is itself instilled through a widespread conspiracy of the powerful—parents—who conceal their role in the whole affair. It is an open question whether most conspiracy theories are equally benign; we will suggest that some are not benign at all. Under this account, conspiracy theories are a subset of the larger category of false beliefs, and also of the somewhat smaller category of beliefs that are both false and harmful. Consider, for example, the beliefs that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually healthy, that cigarette smoking does not cause cancer, and that climate change is neither occurring nor likely to occur. These beliefs are (in our view) both false and dangerous, but as stated, they need not depend on, or posit, any kind of conspiracy theory. We shall see that the mechanisms that account for conspiracy theories overlap with those that account for false and dangerous beliefs of all sorts, including those that fuel anger and hatred.18 But as we shall also see, conspiracy 2002, p. A1. On the Rothschilds, see McGregor, “Chinese buy into conspiracy theory”; on the Great Depression, see Allport and Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, p. 517. 15 For the point that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, and several attempts to explore the philosophical implications of that fact, see Charles Pigden, “Conspiracy theories and the conventional wisdom,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 219–232 and Charles Pidgen, “Complots of mischief,” Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, 139–66. 16 See Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974); George Lardner, Jr., and John Jacobs, “Lengthy mind-control research by CIA is detailed,” Washington Post, Aug. 3, 1977, p. A1; “Memorandum from L.L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Secretary of Defense, Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,” 〈http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf〉, posted Mar. 13, 1962. 17 We bracket the interesting question whether, on consequentialist grounds, it is ever appropriate to undermine true conspiracy theories. 18 See Edward Glaeser, “The political economy of hatred,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120 (2005), 45–86. CONSPIRACY THEORIES 207 theories have distinctive features, above all because of their self-sealing quality; the very arguments that give rise to them, and account for their plausibility, make it more difficult for outsiders to rebut or even to question them. Conspiracy theories often attribute extraordinary powers to certain agents—to plan, to control others, to maintain secrets, and so forth. Those who believe that those agents have such powers are especially unlikely to give respectful attention to debunkers, who may, after all, be agents or dupes of those who are responsible for the conspiracy in the first instance. It is comparatively easier for government to dispel false and dangerous beliefs that rest, not on a self-sealing conspiracy theory, but on simple misinformation or on an apparent or actual social consensus that is fragile and easily “tipped.”19 The most direct governmental technique for dispelling false (and also harmful) beliefs—providing credible public information—does not work, in any straightforward way, for conspiracy theories. This extra resistance to correction through simple techniques is what makes conspiracy theories distinctively worrisome. A further question about conspiracy theories—whether true or false, harmful or benign—is whether they are justified. Justification and truth are different issues, which is why pointing out that some conspiracy theories are true does not show that it is rational to believe in those theories. A true belief may be unjustified, and a justified belief may be untrue. I may believe, correctly, that there are fires within the earth’s core, but if I believe that because the god Vulcan revealed it to me in a dream, my belief is unwarranted. Conversely, the false belief in Santa Claus is justified, because children generally have good reason to believe what their parents tell them and follow a sensible heuristic (“if my parents say it, it is probably true”); when children realize that Santa is the product of a widespread conspiracy among parents, they have a justified and true belief that a conspiracy has been at work. Our final narrowing condition is that we are concerned only with (the many) conspiracy theories that are false, harmful, and unjustified (not in the sense of being irrationally held by those individuals who hold them, but from the standpoint of the information available in the society as a whole). When and under what conditions are conspiracy theories unjustified? Here there are competing accounts and many controversies, in epistemology and analytic philosophy.20 We need not opt for only one of these accounts, because they are not mutually exclusive; each accounts for part of the terrain. 19 On the fragility of many cases of apparent social consensus, see Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995). On the fragility of many cases of actual social consensus, see David Hirshleifer, “The blind leading the blind: social influence, fads, and informational cascades,” The New Economics of Human Behavior, ed. Mariano Tommasi and Kathryn Ierulli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 188–215. 20 For some of the latest philosophical treatments, compare David Coady, “Are conspiracy theorists irrational?” Episteme, 4 (2007), 193–204, with Neil Levy, “Radically socialized knowledge and conspiracy theories,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 181–92 and Pete Mandik, “Shit happens,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 206–18. Roughly speaking, Coady denies that conspiracy theories are generally unjustified and (thus) irrational, while Levy and Mandik affirm that they are. 208 CASS R. SUNSTEIN AND ADRIAN VERMEULE Karl Popper famously argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action; they assume that all consequences must have been intended by someone.21 Many social effects, including large movements in the economy, occur as a result of the acts and omissions of many people, none of whom intended to cause those effects. The appeal of some conspiracy theories, then, lies in the attribution of otherwise inexplicable events to intentional action,22 and to an unwillingness to accept the possibility that significant adverse consequences may be a product of invisible hand mechanisms (such as market forces or evolutionary pressures) or of simple chance,23 rather than of anyone’s plans.24 Popper captures an important feature of some conspiracy theories. There is a pervasive human tendency to think that effects are caused by intentional action, especially by those who stand to benefit (the “cui bono?” maxim), and for this reason conspiracy theories have considerable but unwarranted appeal.25 On one reading of Popper’s account, those who accept conspiracy theories are following a sensible heuristic, to the effect that consequences are intended; that heuristic often works well, but it also produces systematic errors, especially in the context of outcomes that are a product of complex interactions among numerous people. More broadly, Popper is picking up on a general fact about human psychology, which is that most people do not like to believe that significant events were caused by bad (or good) luck, and much prefer simpler causal stories.26 In particular, human “minds protest against chaos,” and people seek to extract a meaning from a bewildering event or situation,27 a meaning that a conspiracy may well supply. Note, however, that the domain of Popper’s explanation is quite limited. Many conspiracy theories, including those involving political assassinations and the attacks of 9/11, point to events that are indeed the result of intentional action, and the conspiracy theorists go wrong not by positing intentional actors, but by misidentifying them. (The theory that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 is thus a justified and true conspiracy theory.) Conspiracy theories that posit machinations by government officials typically overestimate the competence and discretion of officials and bureaucracies, who are assumed to be able to make and carry out sophisticated secret plans, despite abundant evidence that in open societies government action does not usually 21 See Karl R. Popper, “The conspiracy theory of society,” Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, 13–16; see also Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th edn (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1966), vol. 2. 22 See generally Mandik, “Shit happens.” 23 See Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness (New York: Texere, 2001). 24 An illuminating discussion is Edna Ullmann-Margalit, “The invisible hand and the cunning of reason,” Social Research, 64 (1997), 181–98. We note that Popper’s account has been criticized in many places. See, for example, Pigden, “Conspiracy theories and the conventional wisdom.” 25 Ullmann-Margalit, “The invisible hand and the cunning of reason.” 26 See Taleb, Fooled by Randomness. 27 See Allport and Postman, Psychology of Rumor, p. 503. CONSPIRACY THEORIES 209 remain secret for very long.28 Consider all the work that must be done to hide and to cover up the government’s role in producing a terrorist attack on its own territory, or in arranging to kill political opponents. In a closed society, secrets are far easier to keep, and distrust of official accounts makes a great deal of sense. In such societies, conspiracy theories are both more likely to be true and harder to show to be false in light of available information. But when the press is free, and when checks and balances are in force, it is harder for government to keep nefarious conspiracies hidden for long. These points do not mean that it is logically impossible, even in free societies, that conspiracy theories are true; sometimes they are. But it does mean that institutional checks make it less likely, in such societies, that powerful groups can keep dark secrets for extended periods, at least if those secrets involve illegal or nefarious conduct. Of course conspiracy theories are widespread even in open societies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; the only point is that such theories are less likely to be either true or justified in such societies. An especially useful account suggests that what makes unjustified conspiracy theories unjustified is that those who accept them must also accept a kind of spreading distrust of all knowledge-producing institutions, in a way that makes it difficult to believe anything at all.29 To think, for example, that U.S. government officials destroyed the World Trade Center and then covered their tracks requires an ever-widening conspiracy theory, in which the 9/11 Commission, congressional leaders, the FBI, and the media were either participants in or, at best, dupes of the conspiracy. But anyone who believed that would undercut the grounds for many of their other beliefs, which are warranted only by trust in the knowledge-producing institutions created by government and society. As Robert Anton Wilson notes of the conspiracy theories advanced by Holocaust deniers, “a conspiracy that can deceive us about 6,000,000 deaths can deceive us about anything, and [then] it takes a great leap of faith for Holocaust Revisionists to believe World War II happened at all, or that Franklin Roosevelt did serve as President from 1933 to 1945, or that Marilyn Monroe was more ‘real’ than King Kong or Donald Duck.”30 This is not, and is not be intended to be, a general claim that conspiracy theories are unjustified or unwarranted in all imaginable situations or societies. Much depends on the background state of knowledge-producing institutions. If those institutions are generally trustworthy, in part because they are embedded in 28 See, e.g., James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts,” New York Times, Dec. 16, 2005, p. A1; Jane Mayer, “The black sites: a rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program,” New Yorker, Aug. 13, 2007, p. 46. 29 Brian L. Keeley, “Of conspiracy theories,” Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, pp. 45–60 at pp. 46, 56–7. Keeley’s argument has been the subject of much debate and controversy. For references, and a nuanced defense-cum-critique of Keeley’s theory, see Juha Räikkä, “On political conspiracy theories,” Journal of Political Philosophy, this issue. 30 Quoted in Keeley, “Of conspiracy theories,” p. 57. 210 CASS R. SUNSTEIN AND ADRIAN VERMEULE an open society with a well-functioning marketplace of ideas and free flow of information, and if it is difficult to dupe many diverse institutions simultaneously (as the 9/11 conspiracy theories require), then conspiracy theories will usually be unjustified. On the other hand, individuals in societies with systematically malfunctioning or skewed institutions of knowledge—say, individuals who live in an authoritarian regime lacking a free press—may have good reason to distrust all or most of the official denials they hear. For these individuals, conspiracy theories will more often be warranted, whether or not true. Likewise, individuals embedded in isolated groups or small, self-enclosed networks who are exposed only to skewed information will more often hold conspiracy theories that are justified, relative to their limited informational environment.31 Holocaust denials might themselves be considered in this light. When epistemologically isolated groups operate within a society that is both wider and more open, their theories may be unjustified from the standpoint of the wider society but ...