I SOMETIMES wonder whether those who routinely deploy the 'conspiracy-theory' (CS)
trope remotely have the intelligence to comprehend the irony of their name-calling activities - namely, that in labelling people
'conspiracy theorists', they are themselves guilty of purveying conspiratorial thinking about alleged conspiracy theory.
'Hoist with one's own self-constructed petard' comes to mind as an apposite metaphor for such thought-challenged individuals.
The deployers of the CS trope clearly want it to be a conversation and thought-stopping term, from which its recipient is rendered silent and appropriately humiliated. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Those using this abusive term are likely to be so intellectually challenged as to be incapable of entering into the kind of rational, balanced conversation that would facilitate their reflecting on the nature of the term. So we had better do that job for them.
The CS term is routinely deployed and weaponised as a wily way of shutting down any open-minded thinking and discussion about the issue in question. Indeed, it is the overriding reason why the very notion exists - with the CS label strategically used by establishment interests to silence anything that challenges their interests and ideology.
The BBC's promiscuous use of the term is a case in point - not least by their ironically-named 'specialist disinformation reporter' (you really could not make it up), Marianna Spring.
Another irony is that those who robotically play the 'conspiracy theory' card end up closing down critical thinking in exactly the way they claim 'conspiracy theorists' to be doing. Moreover, just because something can be labelled as 'conspiracy theory', it by no means necessarily follows that it is not true.
It is a purely empirical question as to whether something constitutes a conspiracy or not. History is replete with what we now know to have been real conspiracies; and no doubt the existence of any conspiracy would have been vehemently denied by these conspirators at the time.
But it is also problematic to see conspiracies everywhere as some people seem to do - sometimes based on the flimsiest of evidence, and seized upon merely because it self-confirmingly serves prejudices. For truth lovers, that is not very helpful either and can also so easily be the enemy of rational discourse and sober, considered analysis.
I know some people who, because of the fraught and highly controversial nature of the CS terrain, deliberately choose to avoid anything that smacks of CS in order to (they convince themselves) protect their credibility in the face of enemy/establishment attacks, and not because there is assumed to be no truth to such theories and claims.
Such expediency needs to be thought through very carefully, however; and I think French philosopher Michel Foucault's notion of 'fearless speech' is a far more conducive approach when faced with contested and controversial truth-claims.
It could even be argued that if we are genuinely interested in the unrestrained free exchange of ideas, as one of the foundations of a healthy democracy, then we should reject the term 'conspiracy theory' altogether from our lexicon.
The crucial point is that whether a given body of ideas and arguments has any validity is always an empirical question; and to lazily deploy the condemnatory CS trope is anti-science and anti-rationality, as it serves to short-circuit the very work that would be needed in order to ascertain where the truth does actually reside. Which is precisely why the establishment delights in weaponising this squalid term at every opportunity.
