Theorizing About Conspiracy Theories with M Dentith

On this episode of Unsettling Extremism, we talk about the concept of conspiracy theories. People talk about conspiracy theories all the time, but have you ever slowed down to think about what conspiracy theories are? Are all conspiracy theories built equal? Is a belief in conspiracy theories inherently bad? I spoke with New Zealand-based philosopher, Dr M R Dentith, Associate Professor of philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zuhai. M is a philosopher specialising in understanding the knowledge that underpins conspiracy theories, especially in a social context. In other words, they are an expert on the theory of conspiracy theory, or conspiracy theory theory. M has written and edited several books on conspiracy theories, the first of which is called the philosophy of conspiracy theories, published in 2014 see the show notes for more of their writing, but beyond their writing, M also has a podcast called The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. So if you like these kinds of conversations, you want to listen to those too. Here's a little spoiler alert. If you've come to disparage conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them, you'll be disappointed in this episode. But if you've come to learn more about conspiracy theories and what they're about, this is the episode for you.

Resources:

Books 

The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories by M. Dentith (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories: Concepts, Methods and Theory (Routledge, 2024)

Articles 

Dentith, M. R. (2016). The Problem of Fake News. Public Reason, 8(1-2), 65.

Dentith, M. R. (2016). When inferring to a conspiracy might be the best explanation. Social Epistemology, 30(5-6), 572-591.

Website

https://www.mrxdentith.com/

Podcast 

https://zencastr.com/The-Podcaster-s-Guide-to-the-Conspiracy

Transcript

Unsettling Extremism Podcast 

Theorizing about Conspiracy Theories with M Dentith

M  00:04

I think a really crucial part of the story is we actually need to look at the culture in which conspiracy theories emerge and arise and are believed to then work out, well, why do some of these theories get believed there and not in other places. It's not the content of the theory itself. It's the society in which the conspiracy theory is expressed.

Avery Smith  00:30

Kia ora, I'm Dr Avery Smith, and on this episode of Unsettling Extremism, we talk about the concept of conspiracy theories. People talk about conspiracy theories all the time, but have you ever slowed down to think about what conspiracy theories are? Are all conspiracy theories built equal? Is a belief in conspiracy theories inherently bad? I spoke with New Zealand-based philosopher, Dr M R Dentith, Associate Professor of philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zuhai. M is a philosopher specialising in understanding the knowledge that underpins conspiracy theories, especially in a social context. In other words, they are an expert on the theory of conspiracy theory, or conspiracy theory theory. M has written and edited several books on conspiracy theories, the first of which is called the philosophy of conspiracy theories, published in 2014 see the show notes for more of their writing, but beyond their writing, M also has a podcast called The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. So if you like these kinds of conversations, you want to listen to those too. Here's a little spoiler alert. If you've come to disparage conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them, you'll be disappointed in this episode. But if you've come to learn more about conspiracy theories and what they're about, this is the episode for you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce you to M.

Avery Smith

So tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up?

M  02:03

I grew up on the north shore of Tamaki Makaurau. So I grew up in Devonport, on the North Shore of Auckland. And it's actually especially fairly informative as to why I do the work I do. So Aucklanders may not know, but North Shore people probably do know Devonport has its own bespoke conspiracy theory. There's a place in North Head, Maungauika, or North Head, which was a military installation that was basically built during the Prussian scare at the end of the 19th century, when the great fear was for Prussia invading the Pacific refortified during World War One, refortified again during World War Two. And because it was a military site, and it was a site that was off limits to the public, that of course, meant that all of the children in Devonport snuck onto North Head during the night or day to explore the military installation, which is largely tunnels inside of North Head. In the 80s, when the place was basically demilitarized, apart from a naval installation at the very summit of North Head, North Head became a public park, and those children who used to wander around North Head illegally during the latter part of the 20th century were suddenly wandering around a public park, and some of them were going this doesn't feel like the same place I used to skulk about as a child. And this led to a series of conspiracy theories about what has happened to the tunnels that I used to go into, and this actually became a matter of national significance. It was there were two Department of Conservation investigations into the claims of missing tunnels, because there was a fear that some of the tunnels were missing because when the army left North Head and gave it over to the Navy, they didn't dispose of the ammunition correctly, and thus they were leaving rotting gunpowder in a sealed up tunnel in North Head. And of course, North Head is located in Devonport. North Head is abutting Cheltenham, which was then the most expensive suburb in the country. And land owners, as they want to do, become a little bit concerned. There might be an explosive hillside right next to their beachfront property worth millions of New Zealand dollars. So inquiries were made. Issues were raised in Parliament, Department of Conservation, archeological investigations were engaged in, and I was growing up in Devonport whilst all of this was going on. And the really interesting aspect of this is that my father grew up in Devonport, and his best friend Evan grew up in Devonport, and my father's friend is adamant that. He and my father went into tunnels that are not accessible on or in North Head. Now my father is adamant that they did not so we had two people who were both adamant the conspiracy theory was true and the conspiracy theory was false. And this was kind of occurring amongst residents of Devonport, all over the place. And so I just became innately interested in what do I believe about these theories of hidden tunnels, and that inspired me to do a PhD on conspiracy theories to try to understand what's going on here.

Avery Smith  05:35

This is such a cool origin story for getting into conspiracy theories. I think that's so interesting. So were you like going through those tunnels when you were a

M  05:44

kid? Yeah, I mean, we went to North Head several times a year, and so I got to know the tunnels particularly well. So North Head now a lot of the tunnels that I was able to explore as a child are not accessible because they're now dangerous locations and are barricaded off so we know where the tunnels are. There just isn't any entrance to them, because they could collapse and kill people at a moment's notice. I'm also aware it's actually quite easy to lose, in some sense, tunnels on North Head, there was a tunnel structure which I couldn't find for several years, and that's because, as things over grew around North hair, the actual pathway that took you down to a particular tunnel just got overgrown, and it wasn't obvious how to get there. So as a child, I was going, I mean, I know people talk about there being missing tunnels, but I've lost a tunnel complex I know exists there, and it's because I can't find it. It's not because it's been made to disappear. So I had complicated feelings about this particular thing, but also it just turned out to be one of those really interesting stories that continues to percolate to this day. There are still people arguing for a new archeological investigation of North Head, because they are adamant that A, the original investigations were flawed and B, they may have been flawed in a politically motivated fashion.

Avery Smith  07:09

Wow, so you grew up kind of steeped in the, I don't know, sort of the ethos of the conspiracy theory, right? Like the tunnels are blocked off, or the tunnels have disappeared, or whatever. And you had people around you who were for it, and you had people around you who were against it, and you just were just soaking that all up. So that is so interesting that this is actually what you ended up doing. So tell us a little bit about your research. What you're a philosopher of conspiracy theories. Is that correct or

M  07:44

Yeah. So I'm a philosopher whose specialisation is epistemology, and actually even further more so social epistemology. So Epistemologists are interested in the theory of knowledge. How do we justify our beliefs? What counts as good evidence for or against a belief or kind of beliefs constituted with respect to evidence and social Epistemologists are very interested in the social aspect of belief. What kind of beliefs arise, arise in particular communities, what beliefs are good or bad in particular communities? We're interested in the way that testimony plays a kind of crucial role in the formation of belief, and the fact that we trust particular people and distrust other people, or have a lack of trust in other groups. And so as a social epistemologist, I'm interested in the phenomena of conspiracy theories, not just as are the conspiracy theories true or false. But also, why do people believe particular conspiracy theories in the communities that they are immersed in? And also, why do some people not believe in conspiracy theories which seem to be evidently true? But of course, they don't believe them because they belong to a community which goes well, no views like that as espoused by liberals must, of course, be entirely false, etc, etc.

Avery Smith  09:08

Oh, yeah. Oh, this is good. This is so interesting to me. So I'm really glad that I have a chance to talk to you today. So let's get into it. And let's talk about conspiracy theories and what they are. So before I started doing this work here with He Whenua Taurikura, I was pretty sure I knew what a conspiracy theory was, and to me, it was basically nonsense and something that wasn't to be taken seriously, and something that sort of rested on either no evidence or pretty dubious evidence. But the way that you talk about conspiracy theories is different, right? And so I'm curious as to what you sort of think of what a conspiracy theory is.

M  09:55

So my take is that a conspiracy theory is simply any explanation of an event that cites a conspiracy as a salient cause. So I have a non-pejorative and simple and minimal definition of conspiracy theory. It's non-pejorative in the respect of I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with believing in conspiracy theories. Some conspiracy theories are obviously false. Some conspiracy theories will actually turn out to be obviously true, and some conspiracy theories we may not have enough evidence here and now to decide whether they are true or false, although we might be able to make some claim about their plausibility given what we already know, or what we assume we know. And it's simple and minimal in that I'm simply saying a conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy theory being understood here as hypothesis or posited explanation. And we're simply saying, Look, sometimes you can theorize about the existence of conspiracies. Most people agree that a conspiracy is simply two or more people working in secret. Towards some end we know conspiracies occur. No one denies the existence of conspiracies. There are some interesting kind of lacuna here. I think the organization of a surprise party counts as conspiratorial because to organize a surprise party for someone, you have to have two or more people working in secret, because you want to surprise the person who's going to have the party towards some end, the end is hopefully a good time had by all. Many people disagree with me, though, and go, look it's conspiratorial-esque or conspiracy adjacent, but when we talk about conspiracies, we're actually talking about things of kind of pith and moment. We're talking about important states affairs. We're talking about corporate or political conspiracies. So therefore, when we talk about conspiracy theories, most people are thinking about political conspiracy theories, or most people are thinking about large institutional conspiracy theories, where there are powerful people acting in secret towards some end. But even in that case, we know that political conspiracies and corporate conspiracies occur, and thus I think we should be open to the idea that we can theorise about those conspiracies. And so we should treat conspiracy theory as a completely neutral term, and evaluate the conspiracy theories on the available evidence, and then decide whether they're mad, bad or dangerous, or whether they're the kind of thing that reasonable people ought to believe, right? 

Avery Smith  12:39

And so see, that's where you differ, because I think a lot of people, when you use the term conspiracy theory, there's also there's this negative association with it, like you just by calling someone a conspiracy theorist, you kind of discredit their position, right? And you're calling them like a wacko or a cooker or like a nut job, right? So how did you kind of get to that position of conspiracy theories being kind of neutral?

M  13:09

So that's a really good question, because the kind of evolution of my view. So there are there in philosophy, there are kind of two opposing camps when it comes to the treatment of conspiracy theories, at least epistemically. There's generalism, which is the view that there is something inherently wrong with being a conspiracy theory, and therefore there is something inherently wrong with belief in theories about conspiracies. And then there's particularism, which is the view I now espouse, which is that we should treat conspiracy theories seriously on their evidence, and only once we've assessed them on their evidence can we make a claim about whether they're bad or good. And like most philosophers who came to conspiracy theory, theory, the theory, the theory of doing conspiracy theory, I had generalist attitudes. When I first came into it, I thought, well, there is going to be something wrong with conspiracy theories. Most people, when they talk about conspiracy theories, they think that they're deservedly suspicious in some sense, and therefore there probably is some kind of rationale behind it. But the more you prod at the notion of the conspiracy theory, the less tenable that kind of generalist attitude turns out to be, because you start finding examples of things that were labeled as conspiracy theories, which turned out to be things that you ought to have believed, the big examples, like the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to find those weapons of mass destruction that we have still yet defined in Iraq, the British government and the American government basically said that people who believed that they were invading a country on false pretenses or bad information were basically espousing conspiracy theories about the invasion. And now we know. Actually, there was something really bad going on in the background there, whether it be covering up intelligence failures or manufacturing the the evidence in a knowing way. And you just find lots of examples of conspiracy theories that turned out to be rational to believe, to the point where you go, Well, this generalist attitude towards conspiracy theories doesn't seem very tenable, because for every example of a bad conspiracy theory, you can often find an example of a good one. So you can't start generalizing from a few bad cases to all conspiracy theories generally.

Avery Smith  15:41

Yeah, I see what you're saying, and that you have to have a certain amount of there has to be some nuance in your understanding of it. You can't just be an absolutist and say, conspiracy theory, oh, everything conspiracy theory is bad because, like you're saying, there have been some conspiracy theories that have actually turned out to be true, right? So it can't be that all of them are inherently bad. And so what you are, what you're arguing for, is that we, you know, we actually look at and hear what people are saying, right?

M  16:16

Yeah, and I mean, this position is consistent with most conspiracy theories turning out to be bad on investigation. So there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. A lot of them, maybe even most of them, will turn out to be false. In the same respect, there are lots of scientific theories being posited by scientists on a daily basis and upon investigation, most scientific theories will turn out to be false. Only the good ones survive, and that's true with historical theses, psychological hypotheses. We can hypothesize to a large extent, but the evidence is only going to support some of those theories. But it turns out, as soon as you put the word conspiracy in front of the word theory, we seem to assume they're all bad, but we don't do the same thing with scientific theories, historical theories, psychological theory, sociological theories and the like. And so there is a double standard here with the way we treat theories about conspiracies compared to theories about almost anything else in the world

Avery Smith  17:25

well. So what you're saying here is that conspiracy theories are not necessarily good or bad. They just kind of are right, and that can be a lot to hold, I think, for people who are used to thinking about conspiracy theories as a bad thing. So how is it that we can deal with that, like, how can we hold that tension of, you know, thinking about conspiracy theories in this way?

M  17:51

Oh, that's a good question, because that's, I mean, there are, there are kind of two responses to that. The really trite and easy response is that you can argue that, look, we don't need to be so worried about how the public talk about these things called conspiracy theories. You might just focus your interest on what do academics say about these things called conspiracy theories? You say, Look, we know the public talk about conspiracy theories in one way, but the focus is on how should academics who are studying these things called conspiracy theories talk? So you kind of absolve yourself of any kind of public outreach to go look the public talk in one way, but academics should actually be rigorous and precise in their terminology. And if that's the case, we should be very careful about the way we talk about conspiracy theories. The more complicated answer is, what do we do with supposed public attitudes towards conspiracy theories? And that's where things get complicated, because academics assume that the public think of conspiracy theories in a dismal or bad way. It's not entirely clear from the evidence that the public do think that way. In part, this is because there's some research I've been doing with some sociologists in the US where we've been polling the public to find out what they think about conspiracy theories and the results, and we still processing them, doing the P hacking and all of that wonderful statistical stuff, which sometimes I think seems more like magic than science. Those results are somewhat startling. But the other thing is that we've got nice anecdotal evidence of the fact that the public don't necessarily think of conspiracy theories in the same way that academics think they do. When Nikki Hagar released the book dirty politics, then Prime Minister John Key at a presser went, Well, you can't believe what Nikki Hager writes. He's a conspiracy theorist, and the public. Response was, Well, yes, we know he's a conspiracy theorist Prime Minister, but is he right in this case? So they, they bit the bullet on, yes. We will call the behavior a conspiracy theorist, but they didn't bite the bullet on Yes. These are views which are obviously false. Well, no, some conspiracy theories are true. And so I think we might be facing.

Avery Smith  20:21

They didn't discredit they didn't discredit him. Yeah.

M  20:23

So yeah, we have this particular notion of what the public think. It may not actually be what the public think, after all. And this is a problem we have in the academic literature. Generally, academics are often associating with other academics, having conversations with other academics. They're reading other academic work. At some point, we actually do kind of become divorced from the way that ordinary people discuss things, and we start making claims about what people believe without actually looking at what people believe. And there's a nice kind of point from this, from the US. So Joe Uscinski, who's at the University of Miami in Florida, is a political scientist who does polling for Pew Research Center on conspiracy theory belief in the US. So he's been looking after the Pew Research Center polls on conspiracy theory beliefs now for over 10 years. He's using the data that goes back from the 1960s up to the present day. And the thing he points out is that we're told by the media all the time we live in a world which is awash with conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are everywhere. Belief in conspiracy theories is going up, up, up, up, and Joe's going the data says the opposite. The data says the peak of conspiracy theory belief, at least in the US, was in the middle of the 20th century, so around the Red Scare and things like that, and has been trending down. And if it's not trending down, it's remarkably stable at this time, most people don't believe conspiracy theories. Most people have never even heard of the major conspiracy theories the media keeps telling us a wash in our civilizations. So I think we have a mismatch here between what academics believe about conspiracy theories and maybe also what the media claims about conspiracy theories versus what people actually seem to believe.

Avery Smith  22:29

Well, see, that's really interesting, because you hear about conspiracies like you, like you were just pointing out. You hear about conspiracy theories all the time. People use it almost in everyday speech. Oh, that's a conspiracy theory, or this conspiracy theory, or that conspiracy theory. So it does make it seem like there's been an increase in belief in conspiracy theories over the last several years. Specifically, you know, COVID, post COVID And during the COVID era. So what you're saying is actually there's not evidence that proves that. Yeah.

M  23:03

So the only conspiracy theories in the US which remain remarkably popular and also seem to be slightly increasing in belief are JFK conspiracy theories. It turns out over half of the US population believe that JFK was assassinated by conspiracy and that the official story of Lee Harvey Oswald shooting him as a lone assassin isn't true. UFO conspiracy theories continue to be popular. What's actually interesting about that is that in the old days, UFO conspiracy theories were strongly a Democrat aligned conspiracy theory, so they were spelled by people like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, who've always been big UFO boosters, even though they don't talk about it much, they've always been very into what's going on with all those UFO sightings. Now it's a cross partisan conspiracy theory. Republicans also believe that the US government is hiding the existence of crash UFOs and the like. But the other conspiracy theories are very minoritorian beliefs. I think what might be going on with, say, COVID 19 conspiracy theories, is that there are so many different COVID 19 conspiracy theories, and new ones keep popping up all the time that we talk about this kind of abstract class of the COVID 19 conspiracy theory, and we can see a lot of that abstract class in the world. But when you drill down to what do people believe? It's a case of No, there's a small number of people who believe that the virus isn't real. There's a small number of people who believe it was a lab leak. There's a small number of people who believe that the virus was engineered. There's a small number of people who believe it's just the common cold, and governments are covering that up, and we're aggregating all of those small groups into a cluster, the COVID 19 Conspiracy. Theory without realizing actually we're talking about radically different theories which are incompatible with one another, and so it'd be wrong to treat them as a class, because there's little similarity between them other than the fact that their believers believe it's got something to do with COVID 19, even though COVID 19 is defined in very different ways. Oh,

Avery Smith  25:24

yeah. Very, very interesting. Yeah. I wonder if you could talk to us about why do you think conspiracy theories exist like, what purpose do you think they serve for us?

M  25:38

All right, so the evolutionary argument here is fam conspiracy theories exist because people do conspire, and you need some kind of mechanism to detect the existence of those conspiracies when you're not involved in the conspiracy. So most people assume that people conspire for some kind of malevolent or sinister end. So that's why you might say a surprise party doesn't really count as a conspiracy, because you're not actually trying to cause anyone harm. Now, of course, I think we actually can have conspiracies of goodness, especially since most conspirators actually do think they are doing something noble when the assassins of Julius Caesar. Plotted to kill Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in the Roman Republic. They didn't do it because they enjoyed a bit of the old, steady, steady they did it because they thought they were going to liberate Rome from a dictator. But if you think there's a conspiracy going on out there, I think it's reasonable to assume they're probably not conspiring to give me a good time. They're probably conspiring to do me some harm. So you want to theorize about the existence of group plots against you or against your community in order to root them out. So that's a kind of evolutionary argument for why they exist, but that suffers from the usual evolutionary psychological argument of being a just a just so story. We can't go back in time to actually test this hypothesis, so it's just a nice hypothesis. So from a non evolutionary perspective, you can still run the same kind of story. We know conspiracies occur, and we also know when people are acting suspiciously around us. And sometimes people are acting suspiciously in a way where you go, well, they're probably hiding a personal secret from from me, but sometimes you'll see people having conversations which they won't let you you in on, having meetings behind closed doors, and is reasonable in those situations to go, why are they doing that? I mean, they might be doing it for perfectly banal reasons, but also they might be doing it for non banal reasons that should be investigated. And historically, there have been particular people in our communities that we've allowed to have those suspicions. We accept that investigative reporters should on the just the scent of a scandal, investigate to see where there's anything to that scandal. We have allowed for investigators, whether it be within the police and the secret services and the like to go, Well, look, if we think there is something criminal going on here, then we should allow these people to investigate those claims. And in many cases, those people are investigating criminal conspiracies which are laundered through the court. Launder is not the right word there. Prosecuted. That's a much better word, prosecuted through the courts. And so we do accept that conspiracies occur, and we do allow that certain people are allowed to theorize about them. And it's because we know conspiracies occur,

Avery Smith  28:55

right? And that's the kicker, isn't it? It's they actually do happen, these conspiracies that we are, you know, talking about it wouldn't be a thing if there were actually no conspiracies, right?

M  29:08

Yeah, and that's what makes the kind of work I do really interesting. So I grew up in Aotearoa, and I started doing my work on conspiracy theories in Tamaki Makaurau, I did my first postdoc in Bucharest in Romania. And the difference between Wellington and Bucharest as capitals of countries is that New Zealanders, by and large, think they live in a fairly uncorrupt political system, and probably for good reason, by all metrics, we have one of the open and transparent governmental systems in the world, although I suspect over the last few years, that's gone down ever so slightly. Romanians, however, believe quite rightly, that they live in. A fairly corrupt policy. Romanians have fairly low trust in government, and for good reason, the Romanian government has engaged in conspiracies right through the communist period to the post communist period. And thus, the kind of society you're in kind of dictates your attitudes towards views around secret collective plots in the Romanian context, because, you know, conspiracies at the governmental level have occurred. A lot. Romanians are much more inclined to think, well, the government says it's doing X and it's rushing this bill through Parliament, they're probably doing. Why? And we should probably protest in the New Zealand context, because of our open and transparent government, we don't tend to be so worried because we don't think, yeah, we don't seem to think conspiracies occur. Now that doesn't mean conspiracies don't occur within our system. They just don't occur to the level they do in a place like Romania. So I think a really crucial part of the story is we actually need to look at the culture in which conspiracy theories emerge and arise and are believed to then work out, well, why do some of these theories get believed there and not in other places. It's not the content of the theory itself. It's the society in which the conspiracy theory is expressed.

Avery Smith  31:31

So interesting. No, I like where you're going with this, because when you your community, your culture, whatever has experienced and has a lived experience of when you've been when you have no trust in the government that they're going to do right by you. You know you might be more willing to accept that that is indeed the case going forward. So what's your, what's your kind of take on

M  31:59

that? I mean, I agree entirely. I mean, when I was talking about New Zealanders here, of course, we're doing a kind of broad generalization of Avery diverse population in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And so when you're actually kind of breaking down who exists in the country and their level of deprivation, then you start to see very different attitudes. Māori, quite understandably, have a much more conspiratorial attitude towards the crown because of their history of relationship with the crown, and it's an entirely justified suspicion of the crown, given that the crown continues to breach the Treaty of Waitangi, even though, from a lip service at this point, they go, Oh no, no, no, we're doing everything above board. But of course, they're doing it within the confines of a Pākeha system that kind of ignores tikanga and other related things which are important for addressing those breaches. So when you actually start looking at the country as a whole, and you start looking at the various groups within it, you'll find different conspiratorial attitudes towards the government, and some of those are going to be entirely justified, and some of those are going to turn out to be not justified at all, because there are an important subsection of our country who are cis, white Pākeha or cis, white, tall iwi, who have very conspiratorial attitudes towards a government that isn't doing them any harm whatsoever.

Avery Smith  33:40

Yes, yes, it's so interesting, so interesting. So I'll just say, from my perspective as a Black American, right? You know, there is I'll just say I'm speaking for myself. Personally, I'm not speaking for anybody else. But given the US history of treatment of black Americans, the Tuskegee experiment, right? And all that kind of just sort of not, not above the board kind of treatment of black folks. There is another kind. There's another layer that comes along with any kind of sort of initiative that the government wants to target towards, towards people in general, but specifically black folks or minoritized communities, right? It's because we have experienced as a community, the the different treatment from the government, right, that we now have these kinds, or I now have these kinds of lingering questions about maybe the the purpose or the real reason behind certain certain things that the government does. So, yeah, I. Find that so interesting. And I think it's, I think I think you're right. I think again, the depending on who you are, how, how you interpret these sort of conspiratorial beliefs, these theories, really, really, really impacts you. So thank you.

M  35:19

Yeah. I mean, the history of medical misadventure in the 20th century explains so much distrust towards the medical establishment from people of color and woman in general. I mean, you look at the unfortunate experiment here in Aotearoa back in the 1980s the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in the US. I mean, one of the great innovations the CIA had, listeners will not realize I just put air quotes around great there, when the CIA were hunting down Osama bin Laden, they used a vaccination drive in Pakistan as a way of getting genetic data to try and locate the family of Osama bin Laden. And when this came out, the Pakistani government, quite understandably, said, well, we can't trust any American aid with respect to vaccination drives, and this led to a widespread distrust in that region towards vaccinations, because the CIA used a medical program covertly as a way of gathering intelligence. And as people have pointed out, if you want to get people to trust you, what you don't do is engage in untrustworthy behavior. You can't just tell people trust us and then go around collecting data covertly. When people find out about that, they quite understandably go, yeah, probably won't trust you

Avery Smith  37:01

again. Yeah, yeah. And then that's again. It comes back to the whole idea of, you know, believing in conspiracy theories is not necessarily illogical, right?

M  37:13

No, in many cases, it's actually very logical, given the available evidence you have,

Avery Smith  37:20

Sure, sure. So interesting. So one of the major things that keeps coming up around these conspiracy theories is the idea of trust and trust in each other, trust in the government, trust in groups of people. And that's something that I that in my in this podcast, actually, I've been talking a lot about is, you know, with a lack of trust, it sort of like creates a breeding ground for these conspiratorial beliefs to sort of flourish. And so I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

M  37:57

Well, I would just say my good friend Bill Gates, who says we should put microchips in the back of the neck. Would be a great way to solve everything, create a hive mind, and thus we'll trust everyone all the time. I mean, that's the Borg. It's the Borg.

Avery Smith  38:12

Yeah, yeah. Resistance is futile. 

M  38:14

The non joke out to here is, it is complicated, because, of course, people are aware of their own history, and they're aware of their culture's history. And so part of the issue we have is that the 20th century was a very bad time for trust. At the beginning of the 20th century, we had an elite class that basically was able to say things and people would Oh, well, they've got our best interests in heart. We're going to trust what they're saying. And the middle of the 20th century was a period of time where that kind of society, societal accord evaporated, because it became quite obvious that these elites were in fact, abusing that trusting relationship, whether it was the medical establishment engaging in unethical experiments, whether it was the ruling classes basically getting away with sexual abuse and then finding that the courts were simply whitewashing their behavior. In the middle of the 20th century, a large number of issues came to a head, which led to a loss of trust in authority and the establishment. And the problem is, I think we probably had too much trust in the establishment in the beginning of the 20th secondary and actually where we are now might be where the natural level of trust should be in a situation where people in positions of authority aren't working to repair that trust or re establish trust. So this is a question as to what is the right level of background trust for authority here, and I think for a long period of time people. Were coasting on a they will trust us. We can do whatever we like, kind of scenario, and then everything kind of fell apart. Trust plummeted dramatically, and there hasn't really been any effort by the powerful to re establish that trust. And what you instead see are people writing endless op eds of in the old days, people used to trust scientists, and now they don't, without ever addressing why do people not trust scientists? Now, it's not as if there was a kind of natural loss of trust as a kind of ebb and flow of the tides. It's because evidence came out these people weren't trust worthy. So I think the issue of trust here is complicated, because we have to work out what is the natural level of trust. Then we have to work out, how do you establish and maintain trust, and then and only then can you actually start talking about, what should we do about the communities that are mistrustful because, of course, any manipulation we do of the mistrusting communities, if we aren't repairing or maintaining trust, looks once again, like elites or powerful people manipulating the marginalized to get the desired endpoint trusting People without actually establishing a reason for that trust.

Avery Smith  41:23

So what I'm getting from you here is that we need to as a society, we need to look at the trust failures that have happened, and we need to look at repairing those failures of trust in an open and transparent sort of way as to not breed more distrust with people. And I'm thinking particularly here in Aotearoa, colonization, looking at things like colonization, looking at things like racism. You know, those are huge areas where communities have had their trust broken. And so I'm wondering if by dealing with some of those huge issues, we might begin to repair some of the, you know, the lost trust in government and in society.

M  42:13

I mean, if our government was doing that, that would be great, as we're seeing with the current national led coalition government. They seem to be doing the exact opposite, allowing the treaty principles bill to go through Parliament, the regulatory standards Bill doing what it does, the removal of te reo Maori from most of the government ministries. We have a government that's doing the exact opposite of re establishing trust here. So, yes, I agree, the best way to actually repair the loss of trust in the crown is for the Crown to act in a conciliatory manner towards iwi in such a way that trust gets re established over time, and that, I think the crucial point reestablishing trust is going to take time. And the problem is, people in authority want that trust now. They want that trust by Fiat. They don't want to re establish it. They just want people to trust them, and that leads them to engage in acts which continue to erode trust rather than rebuild it. Building up trust is a lengthy process. You can't just demand it of your population.

Avery Smith  43:30

Chef's kiss, lovely. I love that one that was so great. Okay, so bringing this all kind of to an end and trying to bring it around to some of the practical issues that we're facing here as He Whenua Taurikura. So we recently did a podcast on great replacement conspiracy theory. And I wish that I had had this conversation with you before I did that podcast, because I might have done things differently, though, maybe not. I don't know. You know, hey, when I want to talk to we started out of the tragedy that happened in Christchurch, with the Christchurch shooter killing 51 people in their place of worship. And so we felt like we had this duty to sort of cover the the conspiracy theory, the ideology, whatever it is you want to call it, that, you know, that sort of motivated the shooter to take those actions. In that episode, I was talking about great replacement theory, and I deliberately called it replacement conspiracy theory, because I didn't want to give it more credit than it was due, right? Because if you call it great replacement theory. It has this sort of, I don't know you feel like it might actually be true what these people are espousing, and so I did call it replacement conspiracy theory. Is there a better way for us to handle these kinds of when we come up against these theories that we be. There for me, you know, don't obviously agree with there's not a lot of evidence that even supports some of the principles of replacement conspiracy theory. Is there a better way for us to handle talking about these things?

M  45:14

So one way that people like to talk about these things, which is to put a falsehood between two true statements. So if you want to explain what's wrong with a particular unwarranted or deservedly suspicious conspiracy theory, and I think we both agree, the great replacement theory is an unwarranted or deservedly suspicious conspiracy. So there is no legitimate concern about population demographics changing. That's just the way populations work there is there's something true to the particular claim that population demographics are changing. So you admit there is something there, then you focus on the falseness of the actual conspiratorial claim around the great replacement, the idea that population demographics are changing is due to a conspiracy doesn't really fit any of the available evidence. It's based upon a kind of fear of losing power, which is similar to kind of views that people have about, oh, we can't. We can't allow more women into the workforce. What about those poor men who won't be CEOs anymore? Won't someone think about the men and then return back once you've dealt with the kind of obviously flimsy part of it, then return back to kind of true statement talk about, you know, and if you are concerned about the way that population demographics are changing, maybe it'd be a good idea to find out more about the cultures around you and approach them more openly, rather than with a kind of attitude of fear. So it's the I think sometimes people talk about the kind of the shit sandwich hypothesis. If you're going to talk about a really nasty hypothesis, what you want to do is you want to sandwich it between things which people will agree with and are true as a way of, kind of addressing the badness in the middle there. But yeah, I mean, there is this kind of worry about the name, and that, calling it the great replacement theory kind of gives it the kind of stature of scientific theory, historical hypothesis. And I do, I do, kind of share that worry there that we don't want to give these views elevated names, but working out how to talk about those things without using terms that are already in use, then makes seem like you're being really arch about this. Oh, the great replacement there. Well, actually, in my community, we call that the great replacement hypothesis. And you go, what's the difference there between theory and hypothesis? So I think the easiest way is simply to try and work away, to talk around it, with encapsulating the things that everyone agrees are true, but also act to kind of counteract the theory itself. So you

Avery Smith  47:59

have an interesting way in doing some reading of your work, and in thinking about, how do we as a society, how do we handle conspiracy theories, like, what is it? What do we? What do we do? So would you mind talking about that a little bit?

M  48:14

So I think we should treat conspiracy theories more seriously as a society. And by that I mean, rather than engaging a kind of blanket dismissal of when something is labeled a conspiracy theory, going well, it can't be true, so we'll just ignore it, I think that we should adopt a kind of precautionary principle by going well, look, if someone says it's a conspiracy theory, at least someone in our society should devote some time to investigating it, to work out whether it's plausible or implausible. Now, why I say somebody is that there's a kind of economic argument and play here, I have the luxury of being able to spend a lot of time thinking about conspiracy theories and investigating them. Most ordinary people don't. Most people with a nine to five job, two and a half children, a cat, a parrot and and a dog do not have their time in the day to be able to investigate even probably a single conspiracy theory awake. And so it's probably reasonable for those people to go, Well, look, if it's a conspiracy theory, it probably isn't true, because, like most theories, most of them are going to turn out to be false. But that justification of saying, Well, if I hear a conspiracy theory, it's probably false, can only rest upon the notion that there are people out there who are active investigators of these particular claims, people who actually spend their time going, Look, it's called a conspiracy theory. But is it actually just an unwarranted theory about a conspiracy, or is there something to it? This time, I. And that kind of thing can't really be done alone. You can't just have individual researchers in their philosophical setting rooms lounging about in an armchair, drinking their brandy, smoking their cigar. And go today I'm going to consider conspiracy theories about replacement of white populations. And what you need are, yeah,

Avery Smith  50:24

That's what you and I do. Yeah, we sit around and smoke cigars and drink brandy. I wish.

M  50:28

I mean, if only there was the budget for doing that. So no, what you need are communities of inquiries. This is a kind of John Dewey approach to things, and actually, it has a nice historical aspect to it. In the 19 in the end of the 1930s Leon Trotsky supporters in Soviet Russia were put on trial because it was taken that Trotsky was engaging in a grand conspiracy to depose Stalin, and the Trotsky trials occur, actually, sorry, the Moscow trials occur in 1939 a bunch of people admit to being involved in a worldwide conspiracy to topple the Stalinist regime in Soviet Russia. They're executed and a whole bunch of American and English Communists who admittedly don't like Stalin at all. Go, yeah, there's something suspicious about this. And their suspicion is kind of initially aroused because Trotsky's son has meetings not only in two different European cities on the same day, but is also dead at the same time, and they're going, there's something a little bit odd about the evidence here. I mean, not only is trots his son by locating and being in Paris and Vienna at the same time, which in the 1930s is quite difficult to do, but as he's dead, it's actually even more amazing. He's holding these movies so they form a those

Avery Smith  52:00

Soviets have really worked out how to do time travel. And, yeah, I mean, back to life.

M  52:06

I mean, it's probably all Tesla technology, truth be told, and not Elon Musk Tesla, good old Nikola Tesla technology. So they, they form a community of inquiry to go through all of the available transcripts from the trials, and they quickly work out that the evidence presented in court cannot be correct. It is riddled with inconsistencies. It's filled with contradictions. Nothing about the evidence indicates that these people are guilty at all. They present their material to the governments of the US and the UK. The US and the UK are in a high trust relationship with Russia at this time. So as soon as they receive the report, they basically ring the Kremlin to go look John Dewey and his friends have just given us this document here showing that the Moscow trials were a sham, and the Kremlin's response is that is disinformation. So the term disinformation is coined by the Soviets to claim no, no. What the Dewey Commission has said is clearly incorrect. Turns out, when Stalin dies in the 1956 and Khrushchev takes over as head of the committee. One of the first things Khrushchev does is actually go, Well, look, I was not involved in the rigging of the Moscow trials. That was Stalin's thing, not my thing. That was Stalin's thing, and the Dewey commissioners vindicated. It turns out, the Moscow trials were mock trials. They were a sham. The people who testified to their role in the conspiracy had been psychologically tortured for months on end and given promises that if you purge yourself on the stand, your families will be safe. So they manufactured the verdicts they required to justify eventually Trotsky's death by ice pick outside of free Carlos house in Mexico. So it's a large scale conspiracy, and it's uncovered by a community of people acting together, sharing the epistemic load and investigating these large scale conspiracies. Now the downside for my hypothesis is that, as we saw, no one believed the jury commission at the time. So if you're going to have these kind of communities of inquiry, they do need to, in some sense, have some kind of power in our communities. And that immediately, then raises the specter of, well, if they've been granted power by, say, governments or the courts, what's to say they won't actually be subsumed by the very conspiracies they're meant to be unpacking. But if we are going to treat conspiracy theories seriously and investigate them to work out which ones we ought to. Save and which ones the public are justified in treating as being just conspiracy theories. We do need to do something like that, a community which investigates these claims and produces reports, but I'm a philosopher. I'm not meant to be a practical person. I'm meant to be the ideas person, throwing out ideas, hoping that social scientists will then find those ideas and then do something useful with them.

Avery Smith  55:27

Oh, the times we live in, it gives you a lot of data, though, doesn't it?

M  55:31

Yeah, although I joke to a lot of my colleagues, it would be better to do the kind of work I do from a purely historical perspective would be easier to talk about in a world where people used to conspire belief in conspiracy theories were sometimes rational and sometimes irrational. But now that we live in this golden age where no conspiracies are possible, it'd be like nice to do a kind of historical look living in a world where these things are continuing stories operating in the background, sometimes means it's just so hard to keep up, let alone stay in one place.

Avery Smith  56:09

Thank you so much for talking with me today. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you about this really interesting topic of conspiracy theories. So thanks for giving up your time.

M  56:19

Quiet right. It's been absolute pleasure.

Avery Smith  56:23

Thanks for listening to unsettling extremism. In this episode, we delved into conspiracy theories, a topic that can be uncomfortable and confronting, because we have to reflect on what our own relationship to conspiracy theories are. Do I believe in any conspiracy theories? What do I think about those who do, what does belief and conspiracy theory say about our culture, our society and our world? At the core of this issue is trust, how it's been degraded. If distrust is actually a bad thing, how we can start to repair trust, and if that's even warranted, this episode made me think about many things, especially the Now, what if we take M's idea that we should investigate conspiracy theories? Who should do it? And who do we trust to do it, especially as social science researchers who might take this on are defunded. It's an important topic that deserves academic and political attention. Like and Follow unsettling extremism on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Mā te wa See you next time.