A vortex of illusion and superstition

“A new kind of explanation for political events came into existence almost exactly two centuries ago, when some opponents of the French Revolution ascribed to their enemies an inhuman capacity for planning and a hideous intention to rule the world. This set of fears, which began as the midnight thoughts of malcontents, took shape in the course of the nineteenth century as a body of political ideas that I call conspiracism. Conspiracism took on two main forms, one focused on the dangers posed by secret societies, and the other preoccupied with Jews. With time, these fears grew to include governments as well — specifically the British, American, and Israeli. Conspiracism gained a steadily larger constituency through the nineteenth century; by its end, ruthless political operatives had adopted this approach and promoted its ideas, imbuing it with a hardness of tone and using it as the basis of ambitious, radical movements. In the period of the two world wars, leaders rode conspiracism to power in Russia and Germany, then used it to justify aggressive campaigns of territorial expansion. For about two years, from 1939 to 1941, they were within striking distance of seizing control of the entire world. Monumental errors on their part prevented this from happening, and subsequent decades have seen a diminishment of conspiracism, though by no means its elimination. . . .

“The French Revolution had a profound role in the development of conspiracism. By demonstrating the power of ideas and the potential for radical change, it ushered in a new era of human history. By winning avid supporters throughout Europe, some of them prepared to engage in clandestine activities against their own rulers, it transformed political life. From the viewpoint of conspiracism, it turned the eighteenth century’s ‘theories of intellectual and spiritual plots into the paranoic political vision of the nineteenth’ [J. M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (1972)]. If French fears from 1725 of a ‘famine plot’ to starve the country symbolize conspiracy theories before the French Revolution — a limited scheme aiming at monetary gain — fears after 1789 are captured by a supposed Philosophes-Masonic-Illuminati plot to eliminate the monarchy, the church, and private property. Just as the conspirators grew far more alarming, so did their goals — and the theories about them.

“The revolution’s enemies had great difficulty grasping what had happened in France, much less knowing how to fight it. The events after 1789, simply put, defied traditional classifications because it constituted the largest event of history. Many interpreters offered explanations for the causes and the course of the revolution, a process still underway two centuries later. Counterrevolutionaries and other supporters of the old order, within France and outside it, tried to account for the astonishing fall of a divinely sanctioned system to unruly mobs, even as they sought to exonerate themselves. Clearly they could not turn to religious explanations, for how could God have caused this anticlerical upheaval? Nor could any single politician, no matter how disaffected, ambitious, or evil, be accused of wreaking such havoc. Those who thought, in the Enlightenment fashion, that individual motives drive history had to confront this supreme example of good intentions going astray. If the most intelligent and virtuous of men created a monster that devoured them and countless others, clearly something too big to be accounted for the old-fashioned way had come into existence. This left a conspiratorial explanation.

“Focusing on a plot also had the great virtue of causing misrule and incompetence to disappear as factors. Indeed, many royalists found a conspiracist explanation fully satisfying, for it provided them with precise enemies against whom to vent their rage while holding out the hopeful implication that eliminating those conspirators would permit a turning back of the clock.

“At the same time, traditional notions of conspiracism had to change: an unprecedented event required unprecedented explanations. Who would explain this vast and confusing drama as a plot had to conceptualize a far larger and mightier group of plotters than had ever before been the case. Initial efforts to portray the revolution as the result of feuding between rival politicians or from English subsidies just did not convince. If conspiracy it was, it included many thousands of organized and mobilized individuals living throughout Europe. It had to be a huge, evil, surreptitious, and almost inhumanly effective network. ‘The scale and violence of the changes that men were called upon to account for soon seemed to exhaust all conventional and familiar categories of explanation. Some new dimension of understanding was needed’ [Op. cit.]. The moment was ripe for world conspiracy theories.

“Paradoxically, conspiracism acquired force just as it became less plausible. Prior to the French Revolution, when small numbers of individuals dominated society, plots were not difficult to execute. But ideology and mass participation made them far less likely, and the onset of market forces further reduced their potential. In this way, the French Revolution had the curious effect of undermining the suppositions behind conspiracism, even as it turned conspiracism into a political force. . . .

“Conspiracism has had a profound impact on European and world history. Already in the eighteenth century the secret society myth contributed to the American colonists’ decision to break away from Great Britain and added to the intensity and enmity of the French Revolution, while antisemitism spurred pogroms in the period 1850 through 1920. But conspiracism achieved its potential only in the middle of this century, when it added malice and ruthlessness to the greatest of internal upheavals, the most deadly wars, and some of the greatest calamities of the human experience. Even in the last half-century it continues to poison public life, especially in select non-Western regions. Conspiracism has inflicted a number of wounds.

“A POISONED DISCOURSE. Conspiracism encourages a vortex of illusion and superstition. Like paranoia, it ‘is the watery plaster that seals over the gaping cracks in unsound reasoning’ [Clarence Page, “Evasive Genocide Blamers,” The Washington Times, 16 August 1991]. By reducing complex developments to a plot, it obstructs an understanding of historical forces. It shifts blame for all ills to outsiders (‘We didn’t lose; they cheated’), preventing an accurate assessment of causes and thereby prolonging problems. It causes people to fear and hate what does not harm them, while not fearing or hating what does harm them. It directs them to waste their attention on the irrelevant and ignore the significant. . . .

“EXTREMISM. Every hate group has a conspiracy theory at the heart of its thinking. In general, the more conspiracy theories appeal, the less healthy the body politic is. As both a cause and a consequence of political extremism, conspiracism discourages moderation and strengthens extremism. For example, a specialist on the militiamen reflects, ‘if one can generalize about the picture of the world these people have, it’s America being ruled as a country by an evil conspiracy.’ This fits a larger pattern, noted by the philosopher Karl Popper: ‘The adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.’ As a consequence, the further out a person stands to the Right and Left, the more consistently he relies on conspiracy theories and the more profoundly do they shape his worldview.”

— from Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (The Free Press, 1997). Pipes was interviewed about this book on Volume 32 of the Mars Hill Tapes, an interview that was re-issued on a Friday Feature in 2024.

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