Floyd Rudmin writes that: >"Conspiracy theory" is usually used as a pejorative label, meaning paranoid, nutty, marginal, and certainly untrue. The power of this pejorative is that it discounts a theory by attacking the motivations and mental competence of those who advocate the theory. By labeling an explanation of events "conspiracy theory," evidence and argument are dismissed because they come from a mentally or morally deficient personality, not because they have been shown to be incorrect. Calling an explanation of events "conspiracy theory" means, in effect, "We don't like you, and no one should listen to your explanation."<
obviously, this is a major usage, but it is not the only one. Another usage is to say that a conspiracy theory is simply one species of poorly-reasoned theories, in the same genus as structural functionalism, belief in astrology, and the like. Of course, this requires that "conspiracy theory" be defined. To my mind, a conspiracy theory explains some event by hidden machinations of some powerful elite and their henchpeople. As Carroll said awhile ago, a _true_ conspiracy cannot succeed without total and utter secrecy. For example, the role of the US government in fixing Italian elections after WW2 was generally secret, but total secrecy was not needed: most Italian leftists knew that something was going on, while most people in the US at the time would have favored the plot, as part of the War Against the Reds. On the other hand, the long-standing plot to prevent the Chicago Cubs from winning the World Series requires total secrecy. If people in Chicago knew about it, they would object quite loudly, as would all fair-minded baseball fans (i.e., non-Yankee fans). Jim Devine _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
