Conspiracy Theory, Modernity and Class Respectability

One feature of post-pandemic politics is controversy over “conspiracy theory”. What makes a theory a conspiracy theory? Why are they so popular? Who deploys the phrase and to what end? Providing an accessible tour through the social science of power and ideology, Lagalisse and Drążkiewicz offer a mini-series on “conspiracy theory” as a form of social critique that indexes broad mistrust in institutions and the state, and why scholars of the Global North treat paranoia about corruption differently when it’s found at home.  Together they explore the differences between “conspiracy theory” of state power and accepted “social theory” of the same, and what the social sciences can tell us about the possibility of an all-knowing elite.

This final episode explores “conspiracy theory” in relation to class respectability and modernity – “conspiracy theory” is not just a category that social scientists use to judge pop culture, but one that people use to judge each other

Find more about Politics After the Pandemic at The Sociological Review.

Credits:
Executive Producer & Host: Erica Lagalisse
Guest: Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
Sound Engineer: Clara-Swan Kennedy
Illustrator: Laura Arlotti
Musicians: Excerpts from AV materials submitted to the Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic publishing platform and research archive:

• "The Lightwell (Boşluk)", by Begüm Özden Fırat, Sound mix: Sair Sinan Kestelli (Independent film, Turkey, 2020), published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Dec. 2020.
• "Know place like home: The 82.3m2 Project" — Dan Lovesey, autistic musician who crafted soundscape of domestic recordings during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, 31 August, 2020.
• “Walking Through Lockdown – An Exercise in Care” by Kim Harding, who took soundscape recordings of South London during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, July 22, 2022. 

Additional open source audio elements from freesound.org users Halima Ahkdar and Graham Makes.

Erica Lagalisse’s book is Occult Features of Anarchism (2019, PM Press). You can watch her Public Lecture at the London School of Economics or her festival appearance as the debunker of “conspiracy theory” David Dyke

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz’s book is Institutionalised Dreams: The Art of Managing Foreign Aid (Begrhahahn, 2020). You can also read her essay, co-authored with Lisa Sobo, “Rights, responsibilities and revelations: COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the state.” in Viral Loads: Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19 (UCL, 2021).

Find extended reading lists and learn more about Politics After the Pandemic  at  The Sociological Review 

Transcript

Erica Lagalisse: 0:15

You are listening to Politics After The Pandemic, where we think transnationally with social scientists and political activists about recent cultural shifts in the relation to COVID-19, capitalism and other structures of oppression, and how social movements, educators and researchers might respond. I am Erica Legalisse, an anthropologist of social movements and your host as we continue in this final instalment of my conversation with Ela Drążkiewicz, fellow anthropologist and researcher of conspiracy theory. The main conspiracy theory that was highly unrespectable when I started writing "Occult Features of Anarchism" was the one about 9/11 being an "inside job". My activist friends didn't agree with the priorities of the"truthers" who tow that line, and they didn't want to be associated with them either – which are actually two different things, aren't they? Like, maybe if we think people are proto-fascist, we might want to associate with them in order to try to stop them from becoming fully actualized fascist. But, maybe not, if the most important priority is short term feelings of safety and to not be publicly associated with people with bad politics. I saw people struggling with the same challenges and conflicting desires during the freedom convoy movement. And this isn't only a problem in Canada. I can see it everywhere I go launch my book – Italy, Greece, London, New York. To study conspiracy theory after the COVID-19 pandemic, necessarily means addressing the relationship of conspiracy theory to respectability, and also how conspiracy theory is cited to manage and position rightwing versus leftwing politics. But enough for me, let's go back to our interview. You know, many left activists in my own research associated tendency toward conspiracy theory with rightwing politics and, you know, navigating the American context during Trump's presidency, one can see why. But the most recent field of conspiracy theorising during the pandemic – and yet, in other moments in history and in other places, as you point out – you know, highlights the problem was simplistic attributions of right and left in relation to conspiracy theory. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Like, how your study suggests how the liberal conservative dichotomy gets troubled among vaccine-hesitant people?

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 2:29

Yeah. So, this is, I think, where we are going back to this question about modernity and about how we see conspiracy theories as something that is "abnormal" – not fully "West" – which is associated with people who are"not reasonable", "not educated", which do not... We give them all those characteristics that normally are associated with Western modernity, and to me, that suggests that we think of conspiracy theories as people who are basically non-modern. So then, part of it is also thinking of people who endorse conspiracy theories as "an enemy from within", as "the other" – people who have a different way of thinking, right? So, if your enemy are rightwing populists, then you will associate conspiracy theories with the rightwing populists – and most of the research on conspiracy theories would go in that direction, right? Most of what we know about conspiracy theories is based on those kinds of groups...

Erica Lagalisse: 3:45

Yeah.

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 3:46

... at least from within Europe – this kind of research. But there is research like the one you did, and some other work, which suggests that it is not always rightwing people. And hardly. It's definitely not always that people. We can find people who endorse conspiracy theories on right and left. We can refine people who endorse conspiracy theories among those who hold power – Trump, Kaczynski, Orban– you know, there are a few definitely around Europe as well. And you can find conspiracy theories among people who are so-called subaltern underdogs, right? You can find conspiracy theories among people who are hoping for change. So, people who... There is quite interesting work that came from Elvira Wepfer, who worked with Greek environmentalists, and she shows – something similar, I guess, to also what you work on– that so much of this environmental movement involves conspiratorial thinking. "Why we do not have a change? Why people don't care about the environment? Because there are hidden powers, who are plotting and designing, you know, some plots to harm us; because they are benefiting from the lack of change, from protecting the environment..." So, you might have groups who are doing something positive, and they want positive change, but they will use conspiracy theories to mobilise the movement. And at the same time, you have all those people who are anti-climate change, who well, you know, are also an excellent example of conspiratorial thinking. So, that's why when we are thinking about who believes in conspiracy theories, for me, it is a hard question. Because there's so much energy put into quantitative research, which has all those results – I don't know– giving us numbers, that percent of, you know, population with that kind of education believes in this or that. But when you look into details, it's not always the case. And a very good example is also vaccination, the anti-vaccination movement – I don't know if that's a movement, but the question of vaccination that a lot of people ask themselves. And there is now a lot of tendency – now during COVID – to think, "these are uneducated people; these are rightwing people in the United States, or conservative people in Europe, who are connected to the Catholic Church, for instance, in Eastern Europe, and these are the ones who do not believe in vaccines". But we also know that there is a big problem with vaccine uptake among nurses who are well educated. We know that there is a big problem in certain pockets of Eastern Europe among doctors who do not believe in COVID. And this is something that medical professionals know very, very well, and they try to deal with it, and they want to address it. But it's a very sensitive issue, because you don't want to make a public debate – because it might create more harm than good.

Erica Lagalisse: 7:25

It might create more suspicion, yeah. There's something uncomfortable about health workers not having trust in the vaccine, because it points to the question of whether or not there actually is reason to potentially distrust the pharmaceutical industry and these institutions. And this is something that is not convenient to talk about, especially right now in the pandemic crisis.

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 7:44

And I think that when we talk about that, we have to ask ourselves what is at stake in those conversations – right? – even now, as I say that, I'm like, should I bring it up? Because I recognise that we are now in the middle of the pandemic, and at stake is our global health. Is that the right moment to start discussing, "oh, nurses are also very often expressing conspiratorial, you know, beliefs or vaccine hesitancy"?

Erica Lagalisse: 8:12

For those of us that are social scientists, we do find ourselves in a tricky spot with all of this at this moment, because our normal role is often to be the ones to have healthy critical distrust of institutions and medical discourses and pharmaceutical capitalist interests and all of this business. But right now, if we do our job, and we talk about these things, we could be seen as, you know, fueling dangerous conspiracy theories. There we go, you know?

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 8:46

And so much, also, it's not even... like, now it's a really special moment – right? – for the studies of conspiracy theories. Because definitely so many people rushed to it – to this kind of research – but also so much of this research is, I think, a form of boundary-making in science – in social sciences or medical sciences – where we want to differentiate what we do vis-a-vis or versus what conspiracionists do – people who believe in conspiracy theories. Because, if you think about it, both groups are involved in some form of investigative practice. Both groups are interested in questions like, what is really going on? What is the meaning of this? Why those things happen? What is the truth, right? But we want to make sure that there is a difference between a scientific endeavour and conspiratorial investigation, right?

Erica Lagalisse: 9:55

Absolutely. And in my research, one of the things that I noticed and point to is the use of conspiracy theory as an epithet, as a sort of appeal to class respectability – something that positions the user of the phrase as someone who is rational and to be respected vis-a-vis and in distinction to the conspiracy theorist. And that brings us back to what we were talking about before. And I wanted to pick this up and show how these two things are connected. Like, you know, before you were pointing out how conspiracy theorists are found all over the place, they're not just on the right, and they're not just on the left, and they're not just subalterns, and they're not... You know, sometimes they're elites and so forth. And I liked the idea of disrupting the stereotype of the conspiracy theorist as, you know, an"uneducated, unmodern, silly person". But I wonder... I don't know how often we use... I'm not sure how often we actually use the phrase "conspiracy theorists" to refer to elites. We certainly used it to refer to Donald Trump, but in a way, he's a perfect example of a political elite and politician without much class respectability. And you pointed to this earlier, that, you know, what is a conspiracy theory? If you pick out the definition, it's not clear; if you pick and pick a pick, you see that, actually, the criteria are often changing and shifting. Like, there's...

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 11:26

It's very hard to operationalise, when...

Erica Lagalisse: 11:31

Sometimes it's actually more about who's speaking and what's being said, you know. Because some people, like, as a professor, I could say certain things and be respected as, you know, talking about Latin American history, but if someone else who's a truck driver starts talking about the CIA in Nicaragua, or something, they could sound a little paranoid. And, you know, like... If the criteria that are used to determine conspiracy theory were used consistently, then George Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction could have easily been considered a conspiracy theory, but it wasn't, right? And the one thing that's always true about the category of conspiracy theory, the only thing that's always true about the category of conspiracy theory is that it is a phrase used to disqualify speakers from respectable consideration. In this sense, it is a class-based in class-making phrase that itself functions as a way of situating the user as rational and respectable.

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 12:37

This is something that, I think, the question about... We have two questions here. One, which is what is conspiracy theories, and how people use it, engage with, you know, what is it and how it is used? But then, there is a question of the label of"conspiracy theory". And that's a different question. Also, who applies that label, in what circumstances and what for? And when is it not applied, right? Like in the example with George Bush, it should be applied. But how can we apply that to the respectable office of the president, right? And, at the same time, we can see how Nayanika Mathur describes it in India, in her research, how people in power will use the label of "conspiracy theory" if they wanted to dismiss people's claims; if they don't want to deal with people's grievances and questions. And they will dismiss them as "oh, these are just, you know, stories and conspiracy theories, you are all paranoid go away" – right? You have to shush people with this.

Erica Lagalisse: 13:50

It is almost about the right to have ideas. Like, if you are a subaltern or working-class person and you have an elaborate theory about power – it's sort of like, "know your place", you know. Whereas if you are someone in a professional class of people who is understood to, you know, work with ideas and have be entitled to work with ideas, then when you develop theories about power, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just theory. Or even when – if you think about it in a different way – like, you know, police say, or people working in the legal system who would get together and figure out, you know, who did what, when; where's the conspiracy. If it's common criminals that are doing something, then the elites are empowered fully to figure out who was conspiring to do the bad thing. But if it's working-class people, they basically treat them as if they're not entitled to sit around trying to figure out who did what.

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 14:50

But I think it is, you know... The question is what this label does, right? And people can use it in a very manipulative way and, you know, it can be weaponised and used as a political weapon. The label"conspiracy theories" can be used as a political weapon, right? But I think it's also our job as researchers to also think about those questions – when,who,why uses the label – but we still also have to do research on conspiracy theories. And for me, it is also interesting why in certain locations, for instance, this label didn't stick, right? So much of what is going on in Poland could be – the narratives that are at play on all sides of political spectrum – could be defined as conspiratorial thinking, right? There is a lot of conspiratorial thinking in Polish politics. But this label is not really used too much and too often. It is actually – I find it – very new in Polish politics; maybe the last 10 years it started to be used mostly because of the presidential plane crash in Smolensk, when the biggest conspiracy theory in Poland in recent years was mobilised. But it's not really the language that people use in daily life.

Erica Lagalisse: 16:26

Do you think that there's maybe an international sort of cultural diffusion going on where, during the Trump presidency, the phrase"conspiracy theory" became very prominent – at least in English-speaking media – and it started to be used as a self-evident category? And then that somehow travels around and gets picked up in other places? Is that possible?

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 16:47

I think... From what I observe, I think for Poland – Eastern Europe – more important was COVID. This is when the discourse really accelerated. I think. I'm not a historian of the concept, so I don't really know that. That's my kind of observations so far. But the question that I am interested in is what happens when the stories that used to be known as stories of "idiots" – you know, just "crazy people", lies, or, you know, just stories that don't stick together – what happens when we change them from being that to being conspiracy theories? What happens when we start using the label of"conspiracy theories"? And I think that part of it is that, while the stories of a crazy uncle – the proverbial crazy uncle – at the dinner, who comes with the stories and has his theories, they can be ignored, dismiss. "Ach, it's Uncle talking again" – right? – "Who cares. Let's pretend we haven't heard it." When we label it"conspiracy theories" we have to take action, we have to position ourselves. Do we speak to Uncle or not? Do invite the uncle for Christmas ever again or not? Maybe we should send Uncle for some re-educatio. He should educate himself, right? So, I feel that there is a lot of this action and certain practices and processes that demand that are mobilised the moment we mobilise the label; that it changes relationships with people – between people – and it changes, it prescribes a certain procedure.

Erica Lagalisse: 18:39

When I hear these case studies that you've done, is that, basically, all of these paranoid theories can be understood in the same way as, you know, the organ-stealing myths in Brazil can, right? Like, as an allegorical index of what are actually very real forms of oppression. Like, just as the stealing of organs could index, literally, the blood of the workers and the raw materials being extracted from colonised regions of the Global South, you know, stories about being implanted with microchips clearly index widespread anxiety over increasing surveillance; which was on the rise even before I needed a QR code to get into a restaurant which is the case right now, you know. And as for 5G towers – damaging health and sapping free will and all this – well, this is likewise, very possibly connected with the general cultural anxiety over the health and social effects of the increasing use of digital devices and a knowledge of an inevitable growing reliance on these as soon as we're all isolated in our homes. Like, maybe it's not a coincidence that as soon as we're isolated, 5G is also what we want more than anything to stay connected to other humans. Like, maybe there's an alienation of desire going on. I don't know, there's a lot of allegory to unpack. We can't do it all today. But clearly, in America – as in Eastern Europe, as in Africa – it makes sense to understand why... It makes sense to try to understand why even apparently silly things make sense to others, you know. Not because we then have to agree, but because insofar as anyone might want to change someone's mind, it helps to understand how and why people have the ideas they do; which is what you're saying and how you finish off in the paper as well, I noticed. And I'm making a point to say that addressing the existential concerns underwriting conspiracy theory may be more effective than simply just trying to provide correct information, right?

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz: 20:38

I think, perhaps, for me, what is important to have less of this surprise that people believe in conspiracy theories, in a way, I think when bad things happen – when there is catastrophe, when there is an event which is hard to explain, such as a pandemic or a plane crash, or when there is natural disaster, when illness hits the family – I think people are looking for answers. And it is not surprising that they are looking for answers and understandings, and they want to make a meaning of those events. So, I wish that when we are talking about conspiracy theories, when we are thinking about why people believe in those – endorse those– we had a little bit of understanding, and we also have some consideration for where it all started – why people might have those kinds of thoughts, even if they might be thoughts which are harmful, dangerous, horrible, very often. I think it is important to ask also how it starts? Where it starts? Because, if we do not learn where it all starts – why people start engaging with conspiratorial thinking – if we do not ask what are the causes of those theories, we will not be able to address them and to deal with the issues that very often they can cause.

Erica Lagalisse: 22:40

In the first episode, I talked about how orthodox social theory generally involves a structural or post-structural theory of social change, where history unfolds due to relatively impersonal forces. I mentioned Marxist dialectic and Foucault's discourse as examples. Conspiracy theory, on the other hand, is judged harshly partly due to honouring a voluntarist theory of history, where the activities of individuals and groups can and do change the course of events. Now, I'm a social scientist, too. I do structural analysis for a living. I even still like structuralism as a body of theory. And that's a bit passe. So, I'm all for systemic analysis. But you know, precisely for that reason, it's also nice to do a systemic analysis of social theory itself, and ask questions like, hey, given that for decades now, social scientists have cited Michel Foucault – I mean, not always in ways that Foucault would have appreciate in my view– but social scientists do clearly enjoy citing Foucault to elaborate the constraints of discourse and institutional power on their own activity, perhaps even while highlighting resistance among people living in relative poverty. So, maybe we should ask if conspiracy theory is uncomfortable for that kind of intellectual elite because it highlights the social power they do structurally enjoy and, therefore, inconvenient responsibilities that they do actually have? Maybe intellectual elites don't want to think about the fact that they do enjoy more power to affect institutional affairs – than the "janitor" does – because then they'd have to feel partially responsible for the workings of global capitalism instead of blaming a sexist, racist, homophobic "janitor", which is clearly more convenient. You know, some social scientists find it surprising that persons in oppressed groups find the activity of dominant groups suffused with so much intentionality that elites cannot see. But, that idea is not really that different than what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu says when he writes about elites acting in their own class interest but misrecognising it when they do it. You know, sometimes I really do wish I could get Foucault and Bourdieu back here together, mud wrestling over conspiracy theory; because the fact is, chosen definitions of rationality and how one understands power, as well as one's proclivity toward an impersonal or structural versus personal and voluntarist understanding of history do appear related to social class, where both elite and populist theorists enjoy different insights and suffer different blind spots. Meanwhile, whether we like it or not, many traditional social movement organisations and activists on the left are now faced with articulating and effective anti-capitalist politics after a populist right capture of dissent in multiple global contexts. And to do so, it's going to be helpful to really think through conspiracy theory as a concept and practical political challenge. I hope that this discussion has helped listeners understand how social science approaches to conspiracy theory can help us intervene practically in the world. And also, that this discussion of conspiracy theory has helped listeners to understand what it means to do anthropology and to think about power like a social scientist. Those of you who are keen to continue thinking critically about conspiracy theory, check out the links on the podcast webpage to Ela's writing in the book "Viral Loads". Her piece that we discussed today can be found there. There was also another link to a different podcast Ela did about conspiracy theory at the London School of Economics last year. Ela's latest study is titled "Virtuosos of Mimesis and

Mimicry: 26:08

Movements propagating conspiracy theories and civil society in Ireland and Poland" and it looks into how organisations promoting conspiracy theory maintain and expand their influence despite pushback by evoking the strategies of other more legitimate members of civil society and NGOs (or non-governmental organisations). I provide the link for this article on the podcast web page as well. You can also follow links to find my work on the plays of identity as property in the dynamics of good politics among anarchist activists in North America. The shortest summary currently available is the "Anthropology" chapter in the Sage "Handbook of Marxism" published this year, which is very academic for those who like that sort of thing. I'm working on a more pop version now, I promise. You can also find links to my book "Occult Features of Anarchism" and to my lecture at the London School of Economics on that book, as well as two videos of the version of that lecture I delivered at psychedelic trance festivals this summer. As I said in an earlier episode, those listeners specifically interested in public scholarship on conspiracy theory or any other topic might get something out of comparing those expositions, then looking up a word called"heteroglossolalia", which kind of means knowing your audience, which usually means never using the word "heteroglossolalia". The reference for that impressive piece of vocabulary as Bakhtin, found in the bibliography of this podcast, which I also invite you to check out. All of the references to studies that Ela makes in our interview can be found there. And if you want an even longer reading list on the social science of conspiracy theory, I'd say check out the bibliographies of "Occult Features of Anarchism" and of Ela's chapter in "Viral Loads". This has been Politics After The Pandemic. Thanks for listening.

Clara-Swan Kennedy: 27:55

Politics After The Pandemic is brought to you by The Sociological Review Foundation in collaboration with the British Academy as part of the special section "Solidarity And Care During The COVID-19 Pandemic". Erica Lagalisse is an anthropologist and researcher at the London School of Economics, and Loughborough University, and author of the book "Occult Features of Anarchism".