One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that the Central Intelligence Agency popularized the term “conspiracy theory” to destroy the credibility of the critics of the Warren Commission. In 1964, the same year that the commission published its report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, The New York Times ran several stories in which the term appeared, marking its entry into the mainstream national lexicon. Just three years later, a little left-wing literary magazine called Ramparts broke a story about how the spy agency was using student associations as fronts. The ensuing scandal revealed the CIA’s ties to several other groups, including media organizations.

Of course, we can’t say for certain whether spooks bamboozled us in 1964. But what makes it so perfect is that it has all the hallmarks of the best conspiracy theories. It capitalizes on distrust of authority; it offers a morally satisfying explanation for a crisis; it is constructed in such a way that attempts to disprove it only serve as proof of its ultimate veracity; and it contains a kernel of truth: the powers that be lie to us. All these factors come together to make it resistant to falsification, iron-clad, and self-contained. 

Conspiracy theories have been around as long as we have. They are not a new social phenomenon. However, the advent of the Internet and social media has enabled them to proliferate, mutate, and stabilize into parallel narratives of reality at the speed of the signal. And while not endemic to one political persuasion or another, conspiracism as a framework for analyzing information and creating knowledge has jumped to the fore in certain corners of the right, particularly those that are knee-deep in social media. More on that later.

Admittedly, I’m partial to conspiracy theories, as many Americans are. So much of our media and cultural products reference or are based on them; for example, the television shows The Twilight Zone and The X-Files. Both are framed around the notion that our distrust of institutions and perhaps even of our senses—what we can actually see and hear—is validated through contact with the supernatural and the uncanny. When things go bump in the night, we must assume the thing doing the bumping is malevolent and intelligent. Bumping with a cause. Anything less would be negligence on our part, and anyone who attempts to dissuade us with evidence or by pointing to a lack of evidence either becomes complicit in the conspiracy or has deluded himself in such a way that he is unable to see the truth beneath the façade of the truth. 

In a crucial sense, none of this is new, despite the heightened intensity and prevalence of conspiracy theories today. Increased belief in conspiracy theories often coincides with societal crises; there are cycles, periods in which conspiracism waxes and wanes against the backdrop of uncertainty and tumult. That doesn’t just mean terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and war. Each of those things does constitute a crisis, but a more expansive definition is necessary. 

You are not merely listening to conspiracy theorists rant and rave, you are being enlisted to join their side in a drama playing out within a genuine societal crisis. But it’s a crisis for which they have no real answers.

Luckily, one was recently provided by a pair of researchers examining conspiracy theories and their role in history. In a paper titled, “Conspiracy Theories as Part of History: The Role of Societal Crisis Situations,” Professors Jan Willem van Prooijen and Karen M. Douglas define a societal crisis as “impactful and rapid societal change that calls existing power structures, norms of conduct, or even the existence of specific people or groups into question.” This happens to be a perfect description of the circumstances that gave rise to the Trump movement. 

It is a fact, not a conspiracy, that decades of economic, political, and foreign policy blunders challenged the credibility of liberal norms and the legitimacy of legacy power structures—especially of the mainstream sense-making institutions, such as the media and academia. The collapse in trust in these institutions and the elites at their helm created a vacuum not only of power, but also of meaning. Van Prooijen and Douglas note “that conspiracy theories help people comprehend complex events that are difficult to understand otherwise, by attributing these events to a powerful and evil enemy group.” The image of a corkboard covered in red string connecting photos and newspaper clippings comes to mind. 

However, despite their byzantine appearance, conspiracy theories actually offer a simplified, reductive explanation of the world, which also means that these beliefs provide supporters with a sense of control amid uncertainty. If we “know” the enemy and his motive, then we can beat him. If knowledge is power, then conspiracy theories are addictive because they bestow an illusion of power unto the powerless. Suddenly, all the pieces fall into place, and we understand our position and purpose in a world that had only appeared chaotic.

This type of thinking has infected a faction of the right, which is perhaps best represented by the online personalities Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who mix in their shows topics about aliens, the occult, and the schemes of ultra-secret government agencies—the sort of thrilling speculative stories that used to be fodder for late-night radio shows like Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM.” There are others, but these two have the largest platforms and they’ve used them to inject a stream of conspiracy theories into the online discourse.

Creating a catalog of every conspiracy blurted out by Owens would require a standalone article, but here are some highlights. She recently asserted that Israel was founded by adherents of the teachings of Jacob Frank, an obscure leader of a forgotten heretical Jewish religious movement. “Frankists,” as they were known, embraced antinomianism, or the deliberate transgression not only of the Ten Commandments, but of all moral boundaries—the salacious details of which Owens made central to her yarn. There is, however, no basis in reality to the claim that Frankists created Israel, or that Frankism is the “preferred religion of the elites.”

Owens has gone so far as to get herself sued by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Macron, for incessantly promoting the claim that Mrs. Macron is secretly male. “I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” Owens said in March last year. Well, she’s getting what she wanted. The Macrons initially ignored Owens, but decided to pursue legal action when Owens refused to stop repeating the claim. Once the Macrons fought back, Owens did something every conspiracy theorist does: cry out that she was being attacked not for defamation, but because she was hitting close to the truth. 

Carlson uses a similar strategy. He advances claims that are absurd on their face, then feigns ignorance about his own views in order to avoid defending them in any meaningful way. In an interview on The Sean Ryan Show, Carlson asserted that unidentified flying objects are actually spiritual entities in physical form, simultaneously claiming that he is both certain about the fact and uninterested in proving it. Last November, Carlson also said that a demon assailed him in the night. “I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.” Maybe it was a demon, or maybe it was one of the dogs. Who can say?

More recently, Carlson has joined Owens in spinning conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s death. Owens suggested that Kirk was assassinated by someone who was hiding under a trapdoor at his feet, rather than by a shooter on a rooftop, which is what actually happened. She also suggested that perhaps he wasn’t killed by a bullet at all, and instead was undone by some sort of device hidden “inside of Charlie.” Carlson also indicated that he doesn’t believe the evidence the FBI has provided about the incident, implying that dark forces—rather than a deeply disturbed gunman who harbored a powerful enmity for Kirk—are at work. To Owens and Carlson’s conspiratorial minds, what officials tell us is never what actually happened. The absence of competing evidence is a point in favor of conspiracy, as are attempts to disprove it—both are seen as signs of a cover-up to suppress the truth.

The sickness of the mind that has gone mainstream on the right has its roots at least partially in QAnon, which, nearly a decade ago, was a conspiracy relegated to the political fringe. In a nutshell, it held that an invisible war was being waged behind the scenes, not just for the nation, but for the human race. QAnon’s potency stemmed from the fact that it invited believers to participate in a continuing story that unfolded online. “The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write,” Walter Kirn wrote in an essay on the genesis and nature of QAnon in Harper’s Magazine. “It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them.” 

In this sense, QAnon resembled a “creepypasta”—horror fiction generated through social networks and created through a collaborative and evolving process with its readers. Participants are rewarded with bits of esoteric knowledge—glimpses of the “story” as it progresses, with their help. They are not passive consumers but active players in a living narrative, making their own contributions. This model is essentially the one that conspiracy theorists with large social media followings have adopted. You are not merely listening to conspiracy theorists rant and rave, you are being enlisted to join their side in a drama playing out within a genuine societal crisis. But it’s a crisis for which they have no real answers.

I believe, as Edmund Burke did, “that men of intemperate minds cannot be free” because their “passions forge their fetters.” This is a core precept of conservatism in the truest sense of that abused term, and that is why conspiracism is anathema to it, as it uses passions to fetter minds. It enslaves with untruths and nonsense that ultimately cause more confusion than clarity, like siren songs encouraging people to throw their brains against the rocks. It can have no place within an American right that wishes to stand for order and, yes, that thing that has become almost comical to invoke: virtue. But it matters, even now. 

The right often references Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who called on us to “live not by lies.” That also means not turning a blind eye to those who have made a living by telling lies and, in turn, make others live by them. ◆