A History of Conspiracy Theory / Andrew McKenzie-McHarg

Conspiracy theories aren't just purely beliefs and just aren't just purely explanations of what occurs in the world. They do a certain kind of work, and they are used to manipulate people in ways which may be actually quite cynical…One of the things that has not been adequately addressed in the previous literature is that conspiracy theories are often deployed for highly conspiratorial purposes. One of the things which actually stimulates the interest in conspiracy theories is this awareness that, the conspiracy theory, even if it’s untenable, is being used to achieve certain kind of ends in a backhanded way.