For quite a while, people in the media have been using the phrase “conspiracy theory” to mean some crazy, false belief. Think Qanon. Or Jewish lasers behind the California wildfires. Or Hugo Chavez somehow interfering in the 2020 presidential election.
But not all “conspiracy theories” are crazy. Not all “conspiracy theories” are false.
The 1/6 Committee’s hearings have proved that.
It may well be that between the machinations of propagandists, seeking to manipulate people, and the delusions of people with paranoid tendencies, the majority of ideas about conspiracies that float around the world are invalid.
But history also does truly contain real conspiracies, with real impacts on the world. The “seditious conspiracy” with which some have already been charged by the DOJ, and that look (to me) rather sure to include the likes of Guiliani, and Eastman, and Clark, and of course Donald Trump himself is an important piece of the truth about the history of the America of these times.
I very much hope that Attorney General Garland is vigorously pursuing the entire scope of this “conspiracy theory.”
(And this is not the only important actual conspiracy in the America of these times.)
And I hope that people discussing the crazy ideas that are helping to poison the minds of our fellow Americans — like computer chips in the Covid vaccines! — can henceforth be given some more apt name than simply “conspiracy theory.”
(Maybe “crazy conspiracy theory,” or “bogus conspiracy theory,” of “false conspiracy theory.”)
Especially in this era, it would not serve us well for the idea of “conspiracy theory” per se to be comprehensively discredited.
