I had a great deal of fun researching, and gave myself a serious anxiety spiral writing, this essay for Hedgehog Review about conspiracy theories — the theories and the concept itself. It’s un-paywalled today. I used terms like “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists,” which are not beloved terms, obviously, among the people who belong to this community. (Many of them point to the role of the government in popularizing and stigmatizing the terms during the rollout of the Warren Commission Report, which is real, although one of my sources indicates that the terms were already in use before that. I glance at this line of thought late in the essay, when I take up one of the standard recent academic works on “conspiracy theory” and find it to be bullshit.) I did so largely because all the alternatives — “parapolitics,” “deep politics,” the “Kennedy research community,” etc. — smell of euphemism. I don’t think there’s any dishonor in suspecting that some of the things that happen in the world are the product of secret plots, if you can make a good argument.
On Conspiracy Theories
On Conspiracy Theories
On Conspiracy Theories
I had a great deal of fun researching, and gave myself a serious anxiety spiral writing, this essay for Hedgehog Review about conspiracy theories — the theories and the concept itself. It’s un-paywalled today. I used terms like “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists,” which are not beloved terms, obviously, among the people who belong to this community. (Many of them point to the role of the government in popularizing and stigmatizing the terms during the rollout of the Warren Commission Report, which is real, although one of my sources indicates that the terms were already in use before that. I glance at this line of thought late in the essay, when I take up one of the standard recent academic works on “conspiracy theory” and find it to be bullshit.) I did so largely because all the alternatives — “parapolitics,” “deep politics,” the “Kennedy research community,” etc. — smell of euphemism. I don’t think there’s any dishonor in suspecting that some of the things that happen in the world are the product of secret plots, if you can make a good argument.