Conspiracy Theorizing as Imperviousness to Experience
It has always been the case that implausible conspiracy theories have spread: in the modern world, they spread more quickly and extensively, fueled by the development of information technologies, as happens with any type of information. Therefore, it is certainly not a new phenomenon. Like all major recurring historical phenomena, it has profound causes and sometimes dramatic effects.
We tend to consider conspiracy theorizing as mere nonsense, akin to the superstition of Friday the 17th or the good luck of a hunchback. But it is not so: conspiracy theories distract from understanding the true reasons behind events and represent, above all, an imperviousness to experience, allowing people to maintain their prejudicial ideas even when facts contradict them.
Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracies are different from conspiracy theories. There is no doubt that agreements, more or less secretive pacts, are part of politics. Thus, when we read the famous Wikileaks, we indeed find details and confirmations about a general framework already known. These are facts that fit into the generally known context.
Conspiracy theorizing, on the other hand, is the idea that events do not occur within the framework everyone sees and for the reasons everyone sees, but for different causes (conspiracies) that no one sees. For example, the ways Americans financed Al Qaeda were a secret fact, but they fit into the general framework everyone knew, whereas thinking that Al Qaeda terrorism did not arise from the cultural, religious, and political reasons everyone knows, but was a creation controlled by Americans, would be conspiracy theorizing.
Similarly, we can talk about a conspiracy regarding the fact that Netanyahu preferred to strengthen Hamas over the Palestinian Authority because it fits the context: now crowds of demonstrators are shouting it in Israel. It is known that extreme opposites hold together ("the worse, the better," as the communists used to say). But one certainly cannot think that Hamas is an entity created and manipulated by Israel.
Sometimes alliances are formed even among enemies. The fact that Hitler at one point made an agreement with Stalin does not mean he created or controlled communism. In fact, shortly after, Russia and America allied against defeated Nazism and returned to being enemies. These are different things: in the first case, there are details, sometimes even important, that illustrate and explain the reasons everyone sees; in the second case, it is about completely obscure causes that, precisely because they are obscure, cannot be disproved.
Ignorance and Harmfulness
Conspiracy theorizing is a simplistic explanation that arises primarily from ignorance: historical events have complex, profound, and often contradictory causes that are not easy to understand, and in fact, I would say very difficult. Even historians struggle to understand them and have different opinions on them (but why did World War I break out that no one wanted?). However, the difficulties arise especially when it comes to clashes of civilizations, where it is necessary to understand why others behave so differently from what we would expect. Why would well-off Arabs sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into the Twin Towers? It would require immersing oneself in a culture and mentality too different from one's own, something that is not within everyone's reach.
From a logical point of view, it is difficult to argue with conspiracy theorists: since there is no evidence of the nonsense they claim (they are secrets, there is also no evidence that they are false. If I say that Trump is a creature of Martians but cannot provide evidence because it is hidden, one cannot even find evidence that he is just a human being. Thus, if Zionists are the ones managing the trafficking of illegal immigrants but the evidence is hidden, one cannot even demonstrate that it is a ridiculous nonsense. In short, Galileo, to affirm that contrary to what everyone thought, the Earth moves, had to provide solid and clear arguments. It is the issue of the burden of proof that we also have in law, something conspiracy theorists fail to understand.
The best argument against the follies of conspiracy theorizing is that real historians, the great historians, never think of conspiracy theories, which are based on methodological and logical errors that simple minds do not perceive. But conspiracy theorists rarely love and are able to read historians.
Let's Give Some Historical Examples
The longest-lasting conspiracy theory in history, which has caused the most victims, is certainly the one that referred to the Jews. If something went wrong, if a series of misfortunes and calamities befell the population, then the blame was on the obscure plots of the Jews, leading to pogroms. For example, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was justified by the alleged murder of a Christian child, later proclaimed a holy martyr, El Niņo de La Guardia, by a mysterious group of Jews. It does not seem that the authorities were aware of the total unfoundedness of the accusations, while in the case of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it was the Russian police themselves who invented the texts to redirect general resentment against the government towards the Jews. After all, the Holocaust is the ultimate, unimaginable result of centuries in which Jewish conspiracies were considered the cause of all evils.
Let us also recall the plague spreaders, masterfully described by Manzoni in The Betrothed and then in his properly historical work "The Infamous Column." In this case, the judicial authorities themselves believed in the conspiracy, which led to the death, under atrocious torture, of a small number of innocents. In The House by the Medlar Tree, Verga also mentions the strange idea circulating among the people that climate change (discussed even then) was due to telegraph wires, a truly original conspiracy.
In our times, the conspiracy theory that has the most impact is in the Middle East. It is said to be a conspiracy manipulated by Westerners against Islam itself. Khomeini spoke of the Great Satan (America) and the small states of the secular Middle Eastern countries, all in cahoots. The struggle against Israel is not a struggle for the liberation of a small land belonging to the Palestinians, but a metaphysical battle between good, that is, the believers of Islam, and evil, the non-believers of the West, of which Israel is just a pawn. Such concepts are not only unfounded nonsense (one only needs to look at the objective facts), but they are currently the biggest obstacle to the rebirth of the Middle East. In fact, the Far East has made great strides towards prosperity and emancipation by applying, sometimes in an original way, the methods of the West, while the Middle East does not follow this path because it is believed that the cause of backwardness is American-Zionist conspiracies. Thus, the real causes of backwardness are not seen, and the region is enveloped in endless, senseless religious wars: a catastrophic effect of conspiracy theories that obscure the real causes and make people impervious to experience.
But conspiracy theorizing also plays a very broad, even paradoxical role in the West. I would call it a kind of logical inversion. Our Western civilization is the best ever created (not the best possible), but it has its flaws (nothing is perfect), and so a certain number of those who benefit from it want to fight against those flaws and exalt everything that opposes it.
Thus, one now hears praise for the worst world we have today (the Middle East) against the best world realized. I would understand if perhaps South Korea or Japan were exalted, which have made so much progress. It is a matter of misunderstanding, of ignorance of the actual reality. Yet one only needs to notice the direction of the boats: they come from the Middle East to the West, never the other way around. And then, if I were an Arab, I would always prefer to live as a second-class citizen in Israel rather than in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, etc. On the other hand, those who come to us from the Middle East take the worst positions, becoming second-, third-, or fourth-class citizens.
From this arises the idea of anti-Americanism and, in general, the blame placed on the entire West for all the ills that happen in the world. In reality, the examination of the facts does not support such a hypothesis, so one resorts to conspiracy theories, to something that is not seen but is claimed to be the basis of every evil.
The Americans are the evil, so the attack on the Twin Towers cannot have been carried out by America's enemies but by America itself.
As for October 7th: the bad guys are the Zionists, and the good guys are the Palestinians. Such an evil action could not have been done by the good Palestinians but somehow falls on the bad Zionists (it is incredible, but some seriously assert this on social media).