I have a new piece publicly available over at Colloqium, Taking Account of Conspiracy Theories, in which I claim things like:
“Conspiracy theory” refers to a broad church. There are stories about alien, shape-shifting reptiles in control of our political elites, chemtrails and fluoride turning the population into docile drones, and rumours of Cultural Marxism forcing children to change gender. But claims of alien bloodlines secretly controlling the world’s governments are not the only conspiratorial game in town. There are also tales of hidden “pee-tapes” relating to a sitting U.S. President, dirty politics behind the Leave Campaign in the U.K., and historical cases of conspiracy like the Watergate Affair or the Moscow Show Trials. As such conspiracy theories range from sensible, upright members of the community to something akin to those weird relatives you regret sitting next to at a family dinner. Yet this particular fact is not something which is paid much heed by many conspiracy theory theorists.