Conspiracy theory politics in a larger framework

I find the definition of populism promoted by the political philosophers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe very useful. They defined populism is a method of doing politics which frames an opposition between The People and The Elite, the large majority against a self-interested small group with bad policies.

That definition is a sparse one. It allows for the reality that a populist political style can be right or left in its political aims. Or a mixture of both. It also avoids the careless journalistic habit of using populism as a synonym for demagoguery or even for politicians adopting a folksy vocabulary.

Michael Butter, a German analyst of conspiracy theories, uses an interesting approach in his new book, The Alarmed: What Conspiracy Theories Wreak (1), using the word “alarmed” to reference both how conspiracy theories can make adherent alarmed, and also to how many people are alarmed by the popularity of conspiracy theories and the harm they can do. He uses a definition of populist similar to the Laclau-Mouffe approach. He also puts it in the context of distinguishing between “thick” and “thin” ideologies, following a concept of the political scientist Michael Freeden.

"Conspiracy-ism" (Konspirationismus) is ... compatible with the English-language research discourse, in which "conspiracism" has long been used loosely to capture a more general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. However, conspiracies, like populism, for which this understanding is already firmly established in research, is a "thin" ideology in the sense of the political scientist Michael Freeden. While "fat" ideologies such as fascism or socialism make a whole range of and usually quite detailed assumptions about how the world works, thin ideologies … are far more rudimentary. They therefore never occur in isolation, but always in combination with one or more strong ideologies.

In other words, conspiracy theories have to been understood in the larger framework he describes in this table.

These kinds of differentiations are helpful in sorting out what conspiracy theories are and how they work. A task that can obviously be confusing. But his schema does help us avoid assuming automatically that conspiracist thinking is associated particularly with rightwing politics.

 
Grappling with conspiracy theories

Butter also cites research showing that people who have some contact with conspiracy theories can become more open to paying attention to conspiracy theories. Which is not good or bad in itself. It all depends on how well people apply actual critical thinking to what they encounter. Having the kind of overview he provides about the levels of conceptualization involved is useful in sorting out the accuracy and practical implications of such conspiracy thinking.

One example he cites as a conspiracy theory is an American example, the pre-Civil War notion of the “Slave Power” that abolitionists came to use commonly to describe efforts by Southern slaveowners and politicians – two overlapping groups, by the way – to continually expand slave territory, a process that ultimately led to the Civil War. An 1862 book by Irish economist John Elliott Cairnes, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs – which the author dedicated to the liberal democratic philosopher John Stuart Mill – used that framework to describe the history of slavery and the outbreak of the Civil War.

There were actual secret conspiracies involved, notably the behind-the-scenes collaboration of John C. Calhoun - aka, the Evil Spirit of American history – with the legislature of his home state of South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 – against the Andrew Jackson Administration in which Calhoun was Vice President. But the “Slave Power” was mostly understood as a powerful political movement which acted against the best interests of American democracy.

Henry Wilson, who was the Republican Vice President from 1873-1875, produced a three-volume history of the slavery issue in the US titled History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872–77).

Butter writes:

A famous example of a conspiracy theory from American history that distorts the actual situation is the so-called "slave power" conspiracy theory, which gained great effectiveness in the 1985s. The future President Abraham Lincoln and other members of the Republican Party accused the most influential proponents of slavery, a group called the Slave Power, of pushing a secret plan to extend the system of slavery to the entire United States and to enslave the white working class as well. In fact, the Slave Power defended slavery and tried to introduce it in the newly formed states by lobbying and helping sympathetic candidates into political office. However, it was not a conspiracy. [my emphasis] (p. 51)

Actually, critics of slavery viewed the Slave Power in much the way Butter describes it in that last sentence. The plans of the slaveowners and their allied politicians were not pushing a ultra-secret plot. They were doing their advocacy out in the open. (2)

But Butter uses the “Slave Power” concept as an example of a conspiracy theory that was actually pro-democracy as an illustration of how political conspiracy theories can be used in support of liberal-left ends.

A better example of a US political movement that trafficked in actual conspiracy theories in the early half of the 19th century would be the Anti-Masonic Party, which viewed the Freemasons as something like the Elders of Zion in the later, much more fanatical conspiracist theory.

Notes:

(1) Butter, Michael (2025): Die Alarmierten.Was Versicherungstheorien anrichten. Berlin Suhrkamp. My translations to English here.

(2) Michael William Pfatt makes the argument that the Slave Power rhetoric by abolitionists was a conspiracy theory in Political Style of Conspiracy-Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln (2005). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.