Why conspiracies are not the theories we need

During the pandemic some conspiracy theorists claimed vaccines were part of a ploy to depopulate the world (Pic: Flickr)

There is a conspiracy theory to explain every major world event.

People who rightly hate the genocidal state of Israel see the hand of Zionism behind the war on Iran. But Zionists are not pulling the strings of world leaders.

Those who think they are, often want to focus solely on anti-Zionism. They dismiss other political campaigns as irrelevant and can lapse into antisemitic tropes.

Those repulsed by the revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein files can think everything is a ploy to divert attention from the guilty men.

The Epstein files did reveal a network of rich and powerful people who trafficked and abused children and women. But it doesn’t explain Donald Trump’s imperialist wars.

Conspiracy theories about shape-shifting lizards are easy to deride. But conspiracy theories breed because of the choatic, unpredictable and apparently irrational world we live in.

People are susceptible to them because they realise that something is deeply wrong with society—but they don’t know what.

As The X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz explains, conspiracy theories offer “a magic key that fits all the pieces together”.

Truth-seekers pride themselves on their superior understanding of reality. They think the rest of us are just ignorant “sheeple”.

Conspiracy theorists can play a useful role for the system by deflecting attention away from those in power.

In feudal times, women were accused of witchcraft, and gypsy and Jewish communities were often blamed for otherwise inexplicable diseases.

By the late 18th century, Jewish people remained a target, but conspiracy theories began to be used to explain social, not just natural, events.

The French Revolution of 1789 was frequently explained away as a plot by secret societies such as the Freemasons or the Illuminati. Such conspiracies fitted with accepted ideas more than the reality—that people rose up and toppled a king.

Conspiracy theories also turned to “red-baiting”.

Days before the 1924 general election, the Daily Mail newspaper started a conspiracy by publishing the fake Zinoviev Letter. It claimed the Labour Party was about to launch a revolution. Labour then lost the election.

The term “conspiracy theories” entered popular use in the 1960s, amid global rebellions and protests. This was fed by several real events that shocked people—the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1969, the Watergate scandal of 1974 and a wave of political assassinations.

Conspiracy theories proliferated after 9/11. They circulated among those who could not accept that the mighty United States could be so humbled on its own soil.

Then came the rise of the far right and the Covid lockdowns—and new theories fed on distrust of governments and the medical establishment.

A pattern emerges—when faith in the establishment falls, conspiracy theories rise.

In times of crisis, the legitimacy of the ruing class is called into question.

It gives rise to conspiracies that can sound extreme and anti-system. But they are still compatible with the existence of the ruling class and its repressive state machine.

Conspiracy theories take hold because, as Karl Marx explained, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”

The ideas we are encouraged to accept can come into conflict with our experience.

But people rarely jump straight to revolutionary conclusions. Rather, they grasp at partial, twisted explanations that focus on the misdeeds of marginalised groups, rogue agents in the state or prominent Jews or liberals.

Marxism, in contrast, understands capitalism as a totality, not a series of unrelated conspiracies.

Capitalism is far worse than the worst conspiracy theory. It is a whole system that pursues profit at any cost and wages forever wars.

Alienation can make us feel powerless, fearful of others and susceptible to theories offering fake enemies and fake solutions.

Working class struggle gives us the potential to expose the true nature of the system. In the meantime, Marxism is the theory we need.