…in which a discussion about terrible accents leads on to the death of Yassar Arafat.

In most cases, no one likes to be told how to do their job. There’s something basic and insulting about being told ‘You’re doing it wrong’ that, even in cases where you are at fault, you are more likely to double down on the matter than you are to change your ways. Of course, sometimes (and is it only sometimes?) you’re not actually the one at fault, and so the criticism not only falls flat, but ends up being misdirected to the point of confusion.

So, let me tell you about Friday.

Writing about conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory theories has lead to a great many weird, sometimes wonderful, pieces of correspondence. Back when Richard Gage toured the country, telling pliant New Zealanders that the events of September 11th, 2001, were not what they had been told, I had the temerity to criticise Mr. Gage. This lead to several weeks of angry emails from people who seemed to be of the firm belief that I was attacking them personally, as well as bringing into doubt the entire academic world. ((They may have been half right.)) My attempts to engage in reasoned debate were met with disdain, and the general tenor of the debate was ‘Shut up, you philosophic wanker.’

My point is, it’s a hard life being a conspiracy theory theorist, especially when people email you for the express purpose of telling you to stop doing your job (properly or improperly).

So, Friday. That night saw me at the house of some friends, rewatching Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the fourth time. ((Insert ‘force’ for ‘fourth’ joke here. But no, seriously, I’ve watched that film four times now and I still like it. Childhood nostalgia be damned.)) Halfway through the attack on the pseudo-Death Star, I got an email from a former correspondent, someone with whom I had had some… awkward communiques a few years earlier. At the time said correspondent was doing a PhD on 9/11 under a rather well-respected, UK-based theorist on conspiracy theories ((If I hadn’t been a philosopher writing on conspiracy theories, I suspect his book on the topic would have got me into American Studies.)), and my correspondent had garnered my interest in starting up a research group about conspiracy theories on Facebook. However, said interest faltered and died after the correspondent began a long and prolonged Twitter rant about how feminism was destroying the UK. Not just that; feminism, it turned out, was part of a plot to destroy both women and masculinity in general. Despite trying to engage in a reasonable debate as to why this probably wasn’t true ((Well, as reasonable a debate can get on such a thesis.)), the debate very much became ALL CAP SHOUTING AT ME THAT I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND JUST HOW BAD THINGS WERE. At which point I decided ignorance of my new social media pal would be bliss, and so I quietly disentangled myself from his social media presence.

News of my former correspondent would, from time to time, reach me. For example, something happened to the extent that they were no longer doing their PhD under that prestigious researcher; they had entered into some ‘interesting’ email correspondence with Paul Stott; and matters of that kind. However, whatever had lead them to me had seemingly passed, and they were off having ‘fun’ and ‘frolics’ with other researchers. I was content with this turn of events.

Until Friday. Until that seemingly doomed run against Starkiller Base.

I’d like to claim the very moment I realised what was happening was the moment Chewie saw his friend Han get stabbed to death by Kylo Ren. That would be oddly poetic. Yet that would be a lie. All I can say is that my former correspondent’s first communication with me in four years basically went something like this:

You have zero expertise when it comes to 9/11. So please, shut up and stop spreading your ignorance about 9/11. 9/11 is too important to be left to ignorant people like you.

Indeed, he insisted on the following:

You need to place a disclaimer in front of every podcast you upload: “I know nothing about 9/11 or any of the actual evidence or history of any of the events I am discussing in this podcast. I can only philosophically claim “some conspiracy theories are valid” and I have a PhD to prove it”

That would be a quite bizarre disclaimer, especially since 9/11 doesn’t come up all that often on the podcast. Do I really need to mention 9/11 when talking about the various theories which claim the Moon Landing was hoaxed, or the warranted conspiracy theories about the assassination of Julius Caesar? When talking about the death of Yassar Arafat or Alexander Litvinenko, do I really need to mention my apparent ignorance of 9/11? If I say something about Obama’s Birth Certificate, do I need to them say ‘and in conclusion, I’m apparently quite ignorant about 9/11.’

The issue my correspondent had boiled down to the false impression that I use terms like ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ pejoratively.

When you call someone a “conspiracy theorist” you insult them. A whole academic industry has been built on insulting “conspiracy theorists”. You have no idea how irrelevant you people are.

Yet any cursory reading of my work shows I don’t use the terms pejoratively. I go out of my way constantly to specify that I use perfectly general terms, with no pejorative implication, and that when it comes to events like 9/11, I think just about any theory about what happened – official or otherwise – is a conspiracy theory. Yet when I reiterated this basic fact about my work, I got the following very weird response.

I’ve read Jack Bratich’s book. I understand what is meant by “conspiracy theory”. Don’t patronise me.

Now, I know and like Jack (and his work), but we come from different disciplines, and have somewhat different takes on definitional issues because of that difference in background. So, admitting to knowing Jack’s work and definitions doesn’t entail knowing mine. Being aware of a literature doesnt tell you whether everyone in that field shares the same basic definitions. In both the PhD and the book I go to great lengths to point out just where I differ from my contemporaries about these things called ‘conspiracy theories.’ Yet pressing that point just lead on to claims like this:

My point is: 9/11 is the defining event of the 21st century and there is zero academic research, no funding and no academic conferences about 9/11. Instead we have millions spent on “theories of conspiracy theories” research and conferences – which tell us nothing about 9/11. I went to a conference last year at King College in London with Fenster, Knight, Bratich etc and it was a total disaster. Nobody had anything to say. Your research has nothing meaningful to say about 9/11. It could almost be a conspiracy?

THAT’S MY POINT.

Which sounds suspiciously like I’m in on some kind of conspiracy to suppress the truth about 9/11. Indeed, my correspondent went on to claim:

As I said, it could almost be a conspiracy – not to research 9/11 and not to question the official story?

Instead … lets fund research into “Theories of Conspiracy Theorie” and turn “conspiracy theorists” into a moral panic … that way the state will not have to fund academic research into 9/11.

THAT’S MY POINT

I should like to point out at this stage that academic work has not exactly been the luxury yacht buying-spree the brochures made it out to be.

Leaving sarcasm to one side, however, I can sort of see where my correspondent was coming from. Now, the following does not apply to all, or even most conspiracy theorists (although I guess it does apply to anyone who is fixated on a topic, regardless of whether it turns out to be a conspiracy theory): some people think their pet subject is the most important subject ever, and people who don’t appreciate that fact are dunderheads. My correspondent quite obviously thinks 9/11 is the most important event of the century thus far. Maybe it is (at least in the West), although even then, is that something you would want to tell indigenous rights activists in, say, Australia or Aotearoa? However, just because someone else doesn’t share your fixation doesn’t make their work the result of some sinister set of background forces.

The debate went on and on, with me saying ‘Look, I talk about a lot of examples, and the various theories of 9/11 are just some of the many I use to illustrate epistemic issues that surround belief in these things called “conspiracy theories”‘, but that only led to this:

OK. I got it. You have got nothing to say about 9/11 – the defining event of the 21st Century. That makes you a good little academic and I’m sure you will have a successful academic career.

Thus ended a frustrating line of correspondence.

Despite what certain critics of mine might like to think, my particular work on the philosophy of conspiracy theories does not pay me in gold ingots, nor has it kept me comfortable. My take on conspiracy theory theories is still considered to be at the ‘wacky’, ‘probably a conspiracy theorist in denial’ end of the spectrum. Whilst I’m garnering publications, invites, and the like, I’m still involved in an uphill battle to change hearts and minds. It’s a curious battle, because whenever I give public talks I mostly find my audiences agreeing with me, but, well, academics sometimes have some weird priors lurking as the unexamined bases for their beliefs. So, to be accused of having views and opinions which are not my own… Well, there’s a term for that. But I guess I’m used to that. What I’m not used to is being told that 9/11 either is, or should be, my business, as opposed to what is my business, which is talk of conspiracy theories generally.

There is a lot wrong with the academic system. Better, well-established intellectuals than myself have pointed out the issues in peer review, research funding, hiring, and topic selection in the Academy. However, one virtue of the system is researchers research what research they think deserves researching. Should I have an even more nuanced view on 9/11 than I do? Sure, I certainly could; my knowledge about 9/11 isn’t as vast as it could be, but that’s because my work requires me to have broad knowledge about a lot of conspiracy theories, rather than narrow but deep knowledge about a few. That’s a choice I made in doing the kind of work I do.

Although, a better choice would not be to interact with trolls.

So, all going well, this October will see me in Romania, where I will reside for a year at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest whilst working on my project ‘The Ethics of Investigation: When are we obliged to take conspiracy theories seriously?’.

I’ve been pitching this project for several years now, and had almost entirely given up the idea it would ever get anywhere. I had a back-up plan for achieving the ends of the project another way, but now it looks as if plan C (for there is never a plan A; plan A is always a post facto justification for what actually happened) can disappear into the mist, never to be spoken of again.

The project, which I sometimes just call ‘Taking conspiracy theories seriously’, is an extension of my PhD and book. After all, whether or not you think conspiracy theories are typically false beliefs, or that they do not entirely deserve their bad reputation, conspiracy theories in contemporary political discourse are problematic. On the one hand, if some claim about the existence of conspiracy involving the members of an influential, public institution turns out to be true, then we are obliged to take action. On the other hand, there are so many conspiracy theories bandied about in public discourse that – for the average person – it is hard to know which conspiracy theories to take seriously.

In my book I argue – qua Charles Pigden – that the notion conspiracy theories are prima facie unwarranted (and thus not worth taking seriously) is a modern superstition; it turns out that there are a range of cases where it permissible and sometimes obligatory to believe conspiracy theories. I am extending that analysis into the development of an ‘ethics of investigation’: in what range of cases are we actually obliged to go and look at the evidence. Not just that; when – if ever – might we be entitled to be dismissive of a conspiracy theory without investigating it?

I plan to examine three related problems:

1. When is it rational for citizens to trust public officials, given that conspiracy theories which portray them as guilty of suspicious or even sinister activities sometimes turn out to be true?
2. What sort of political culture, and what kinds of social arrangements, would ensure that it is, on the whole, rational for citizens to trust politicians and others acting in a public capacity (and to also take a sceptical view of conspiracy theories)?
3. When is it rational for journalists and others to take conspiracy theories seriously and even to investigate them? Could it be rational to take a conspiracy theory seriously even when it is not rational to believe it?

In an environment in which people take a dim view of conspiracy theories, conspiracies can multiply and prosper. If nobody takes conspiracy theories seriously, then it is much easier for conspirators to succeed. Conversely, in an environment in which conspiracy theories are taken seriously, and investigated by journalists, police and the like, conspiracies should be much likely to fail. Thus, influential institutions and the people who run them are more likely to be trustworthy if they are not automatically trusted, but, rather, are subject to the vigilance of, say, an investigative press –- moreover, a press which does not think it a mark of intellectual sophistication to dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand.

My project will provide a framework for such an ethics of investigation with regard to conspiracy theories, which is rooted in Epistemology — with respect to the rationality of such beliefs — and Ethics — with respect to when we might be obligated to treat claims of conspiracy seriously.

Roll on October!

I should have a proper post tomorrow (all going well). For the meantime, I’ve been busy updating the FAQ on this site, adding in a whole lot of questions I’ve been asked by email over the last few years. Think of it as a resource the next time someone decides to quiz me for an article.

The FAQ.