Why I Hate the Term Conspiracy Theory

People have been referring to conspiracy theories since the end of the 19th century, but it's only been the last couple of decades that it's taken off as a common term.

Shows like The X-Files and real life events like the Watergate Scandal have popularized the notion, to the point where nothing can happen without someone somewhere deciding that dark forces are behind it.

In its purest form, the conspiracy theory runs like this:  a secret society of high ranking officials (governmental personnel, religious figures, police chiefs and the like) get together to form a plan. They then put it into operation, causing incidents, events or a long-running operation.

Presidents are shot. Astronauts appear to land on the moon.  The World Trade Center collapses.  Pagan, Catholic or Zionist rituals permeate world government.  Reptilian aliens shape-shift into world leaders.

The trouble is that some of these things could well be true. The President of the United States really was at the heart of the Watergate Conspiracy.  But when such truths are thrown into the same category as the more outlandish ideas, then it tends to reduce the whole to pulp, tabloid fiction.

Have you worked out yet which of the two narratives is 'real history' and which is 'just a conspiracy theory'?

It's this narrow line which makes me really detest the term 'conspiracy theory'. It's thrown at anything which somebody doesn't want anyone else to look at too closely. 

Negative connotations like 'not feasible', 'living in a dream world' and 'unrealistic' get bandied around, when none may be appropriate.

What happened to the old Socratic philosophy of questioning everything?  Particularly anything to do with government. 

Bad things do happen.  Conspiracies are hatched. Governments may act in self-interest.  History, and particularly political history, rarely looks like a Disney film; and the heroes and villains may all be the same people.

Those who need to be told what to believe aren't asking the right questions. They are the ones still clinging to the infant's belief that people in power have their best interests at heart, 100% of the time.

They may well do, but not 100% of the time; and only when your personal interests converge with that of the rest of the nation, as perceived by those in charge.

Personally, when faced with something dismissed outright as a conspiracy theory, I approach it as I do generally accepted fact.  I ask for the primary sources.  I read, I listen and I determine the most probable version of events.  I look at the context and what happened next.  I follow the money to see who gained.

And sometimes even all of that doesn't point to one major interpretation; and sometimes it does. Whether the tale is disdained as a 'conspiracy theory' or labelled 'historical fact' shouldn't really come into it.

What the evidence suggests is the most important aspect of all.

_{Answers:  Conspiracy One:  The Gunpowder Plot of 1605.  Conspiracy Two:  The World Trade Center Attacks of 2001.}

My main gripe with the term 'conspiracy theory' is in how it is used. 

Official history may be examined from every possible avenue and angle.  Libraries full of history books on the same subject are testimony to that.  Conspiracy theories are meant to be instantly put aside, never to be considered again.

No, that is not how historians work.  If history is written by the winners (who aren't always those who thought that they won at the time), then there is practically a duty to investigate what stories were left untold.

The term 'conspiracy theory' tends to be injected into the debate in the same way as other stop words, like 'un-American', 'paedophilia' or 'Nazi'.  They are words or phrases which you can't argue beyond without appearing somehow ridiculous, naive, criminally insane or traitorous. It's a personal attack to divert attention away from what you're actually saying.

At the very least, that's bad debating skills.  At worse, it's forcing conformity into a single point of view.

Moreover, by using the word 'theory', it implies that no evidence has been produced at all; or that nothing is proven by that which is on the table.  How many people, with just a casual or passing interest in the story, actively evaluate the facts for themselves?  There's an assumption that the person dismissing the case has already done that and found the evidence lacking.

Am I saying that every version of events labelled a 'conspiracy theory' is actually true?  No, I'm not.  But I am arguing that we'll never know, unless we afford them all the same scrutiny as we do the commonly accepted versions.

Under the strong spotlight of the evidence, many will wither away as unsupported paranoia.  But others may not.  As Mulder, in The X-Files, put it so succinctly, the truth is out there.